If you spent the first week of November 2020 glued to a flickering television screen, you weren't alone. It was a bizarre, slow-motion week. We all saw the "Red Mirage" early on, where it looked like Donald Trump was cruising to a win, only for the "Blue Shift" to kick in as mail-in ballots were tallied over several days. But looking back from 2026, the 2020 US election results aren't just about who won or lost—they're about a massive, structural shift in how Americans actually show up to vote.
Joe Biden ended up with 306 electoral votes. Donald Trump got 232. It’s a mirror image of the 2016 map, but the internal mechanics were totally different. Biden flipped key "Blue Wall" states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, but he also did something Democrats hadn't managed in decades: he won Georgia and Arizona.
The Raw Numbers of the 2020 US Election Results
Let’s talk scale. This wasn't just a high-turnout election; it was a record-shattering explosion of participation. Biden didn't just win; he netted 81,283,501 votes. That is the most any presidential candidate has ever received in the history of this country. Trump didn't exactly slump, either. He brought in 74,223,975 votes, which, ironically, was more than any sitting president had ever received before him.
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The percentage of the popular vote was 51.3% for Biden and 46.8% for Trump.
Why was it so huge? Basically, the pandemic forced a massive experiment in mail-in voting. Roughly 46% of voters cast their ballots by mail or absentee. People who had never voted before found a ballot on their kitchen table and decided, "Why not?" This led to a 66.8% turnout rate among eligible voters—the highest since 1908.
Why the Swing States Flipped
You've probably heard a lot about the "suburban revolt." It's mostly true. Biden significantly improved on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 performance in the suburbs. In 2016, Trump won white suburban voters by 16 points. By 2020, that lead shriveled to just 4 points. That shift alone was enough to tip states like Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania was the big one. Biden won it by about 1.16 percentage points—roughly 80,000 votes. If you look at Wisconsin, the margin was even tighter: 0.63%, or just over 20,000 votes.
But it wasn't all one-way traffic. Trump actually made surprising gains with Hispanic and Latino voters, especially in Florida and South Texas. In Florida, he won the state comfortably by 3.3 points, largely because he improved his performance in Miami-Dade County. This proved that the "Latino vote" isn't a monolith—it's a complex mix of Cuban, Venezuelan, Puerto Rican, and Mexican-American voters with very different priorities.
The Legal Battles and the "Blue Shift"
The week after the election was, honestly, a mess. Because Pennsylvania and Wisconsin didn't allow officials to start processing mail-in ballots until Election Day, the early results looked heavily skewed toward Trump. This is what experts call the "Blue Shift." Since Democrats were far more likely to use mail-in ballots during the COVID-19 pandemic, their votes were counted last.
Trump’s team filed dozens of lawsuits—over 60, actually. They challenged everything from signature verification in Arizona to ballot drop boxes in Pennsylvania. Almost all of them were dismissed by both state and federal courts, including judges appointed by Trump himself. William Barr, the Attorney General at the time, famously stated that the Department of Justice found no evidence of widespread fraud that would have changed the outcome.
What Most People Get Wrong
One big misconception is that the high turnout only helped Biden. It didn't. Trump actually mobilized millions of "low-propensity" voters—people who don't usually vote but came out specifically for him. The Brookings Institution found that while Biden won the suburbs, Trump actually increased his dominance in rural areas, jumping from 59% of the rural vote in 2016 to 65% in 2020.
Another surprise? The "gender gap" actually narrowed slightly. Biden did better with men than Clinton did, but Trump actually improved his standing with women, moving from 39% support in 2016 to 44% in 2020.
Actionable Takeaways for Future Elections
If you're trying to understand where American politics is headed based on these results, keep these three things in mind:
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- Suburbs are the new battleground: The shift in suburban white voters is the primary reason the "Blue Wall" returned to the Democrats. Watch counties like Maricopa in Arizona or Gwinnett in Georgia; they are the new bellwethers.
- Mail-in voting is here to stay: Regardless of the controversy, once people get used to the convenience of voting from home, they rarely go back. This changes how campaigns spend money—they have to "chase" ballots for weeks, not just on one Tuesday in November.
- Demographics aren't destiny: The Republican gains with Hispanic voters in Florida and Texas show that neither party can take any ethnic group for granted. Messaging on the economy and "law and order" resonated in ways that caught many pollsters off guard.
To truly dig into the data yourself, you should check out the official state certification records or the MIT Election Data and Science Lab. They provide the most granular breakdown of how individual precincts shifted. Understanding these micro-trends is the only way to cut through the noise of the national headlines.
Next Steps:
If you want to see how these patterns held up, you can compare these 2020 figures against the 2022 midterms or the 2024 general election. Pay close attention to whether the "Blue Shift" in Pennsylvania narrowed as the state updated its processing laws.
Data Sources:
- Federal Election Commission (Official 2020 Results)
- Pew Research Center (Voter Turnout and Demographics)
- Ballotpedia (State-by-State Electoral Breakdowns)
- MIT Election Data and Science Lab (Blue Shift Analysis)