Pennsylvania is always a mess during elections. Honestly, if you live here, you're used to the constant TV ads and the feeling that the entire world is staring at your backyard every four years. But 2020? That was different. It wasn't just another election; it was a grueling, multi-day waiting game that basically turned the "Blue Wall" into a construction site for a week.
When people talk about the 2020 election results pennsylvania, they usually focus on the late-night shifts and the "Red Mirage." You probably remember it. On election night, Donald Trump looked like he was coasting to a win. Then, the mail-in ballots started hitting the fans.
The Numbers That Flipped the State
Let’s get the hard data out of the way first because the margins were razor-thin. Joe Biden ended up taking the state's 20 electoral votes by a margin of roughly 80,555 votes. That sounds like a lot until you realize nearly 7 million people voted.
Biden finished with 3,458,229 votes (50.01%), while Trump pulled in 3,377,674 votes (48.84%). Libertarian Jo Jorgensen scooped up 79,380 votes, which—kinda interestingly—was almost the exact size of the gap between the two main guys.
The turnout was insane. We’re talking 76.5% of registered voters showing up or mailing it in. That’s the highest since 1900. People were motivated, and the state's new rules allowed for a massive wave of mail-in voting that changed everything.
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Why the "Blue Shift" Occurred
If you were watching the news on Tuesday night, it looked like Trump had a lead of hundreds of thousands. People were calling it for him. But Pennsylvania law—specifically Act 77—didn't allow counties to even start opening those mail-in envelopes until 7:00 AM on Election Day.
Because Democrats were way more likely to vote by mail during the pandemic, and Republicans tended to show up in person, the "Election Day" votes were counted first. This created a massive, temporary lead for Trump. Then came the "Blue Shift." Over the next four days, as the mail-in piles were processed, Biden chipped away at that lead. By Saturday morning, the math finally flipped.
The Suburban Surge and the "Pivot Counties"
Biden didn't win because of a single city. Sure, Philadelphia did its thing, but Biden’s real secret sauce was the suburbs. In the "collar counties" around Philly—Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery—he absolutely crushed it.
Take Chester County as an example. It used to be a Republican stronghold. Mitt Romney won it in 2012. In 2020, Biden won it by double digits. He also managed to stop the bleeding in places like Lackawanna County (his birthplace) and even made a dent in Lancaster County, becoming the first Democrat in decades to cross the 100,000-vote threshold there.
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Trump, on the other hand, held onto his base in rural PA. He won 54 out of 67 counties. The map looked like a sea of red with small islands of blue, but those blue islands—Philly, Pittsburgh, Erie, and the Lehigh Valley—held the bulk of the population.
The "Naked Ballot" Drama
One of the weirder parts of the 2020 election results pennsylvania was the fight over "naked ballots." In PA, you have to put your ballot in a secrecy envelope, and then put that into the mailing envelope. If you forget the inner envelope, it’s "naked."
Courts ruled these wouldn't count. There was a huge panic that tens of thousands of Biden votes would be tossed. In the end, only about 1% of mail-in ballots were rejected for this reason in places like Philadelphia. It mattered, but not enough to change the outcome.
Legal Challenges and Audits
The aftermath was basically a marathon of lawsuits. The Trump campaign filed dozens of challenges, focusing on things like how close observers could stand to the counting tables and whether "cured" ballots (where voters fixed mistakes) should count.
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None of it changed the tally. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court and several federal judges—including some appointed by Republicans—found no evidence of widespread fraud that would have flipped the 80,000-vote gap. On November 24, 2020, the state officially certified the results.
Beyond the Presidency: The Under-Card
While everyone was staring at the Biden-Trump numbers, something else happened. Republicans actually did pretty well in the rest of the state. They flipped two statewide offices:
- State Treasurer: Stacy Garrity (R) beat the incumbent Joe Torsella (D).
- Auditor General: Timothy DeFoor (R) won his race.
This "split-ticket" voting suggests that many Pennsylvanians weren't necessarily voting for a Democratic wave; they were specifically voting against Trump or for Biden, while still sticking with Republicans for local roles.
What This Means for You Now
If you’re looking back at these results to understand the future of PA politics, here are the three biggest takeaways:
- Mail-in voting is the new normal. It’s not going away, and it means we probably won't know the winner on election night in any close race.
- The Suburbs are the kingmaker. If you want to win PA, you have to win the educated voters in the counties surrounding Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
- Rural turnout is capped. Trump maximized rural turnout in 2020, but the population decline in those areas makes it harder for that strategy to win statewide without suburban support.
For anyone wanting to dive deeper into the specific county-by-county breakdowns, the Pennsylvania Department of State website still hosts the full, certified spreadsheets. It's a goldmine of data if you're into the nitty-gritty of precinct-level shifts.
If you are planning to vote in an upcoming election in Pennsylvania, make sure your registration is updated at vote.pa.gov and, for heaven's sake, remember to use both envelopes if you're voting by mail. Those secrecy envelopes are annoying, but they’re the law.