The 2020 Election Was Not Close
It's only our stupid, archaic election rules that made it seem that way
There is a growing narrative on both sides of the political spectrum that the 2020 election results show that our country is just about evenly divided and this means that (a) Joe Biden lacks the clear majority that would give him a national mandate to enact his agenda; and (b) the country failed to reject Trump. This is false. Biden won the presidential vote by 5.5 million votes and counting, representing 3.6% of the electorate. Trump famously lost the popular vote in 2016. Bush lost it in 2000. Biden’s victory margin was bigger than Bush’s margin in 2004 (2.4%), and similar to Obama’s margin in 2012 (3.9%). Obama’s 2008 margin (7.2%) is the only one in the last 20 years that is substantially larger. So in terms of what the American people wanted, judging by recent historical standards, it was a decisive victory for Biden.
The Election Feels Close
The false narrative of a close election was cause by a few factors. One is that the election was in fact closer than expected, though that’s only because some pre-election polls gave Biden and Congressional Democrats a double-digit lead, with the Fivethirtyeight estimate at 8.4% which, in hindsight, was far too optimistic. The fact that the election was closer than expected has led many people to conclude that it was close in absolute terms. This narrative was also formed early because one of the earliest states to report results was Florida, which revealed a massive polling error and caused real doubt about Biden’s chances nationally. That plus a few days of genuine uncertainly, with in-person mostly Republican votes being counted early, and mostly Democratic mail-in ballots taking longer, gave the impression of a very close race.
But by far, the factor contributing most to the idea that the country was nearly equally divided is our archaic electoral system. While the election was not close in terms of absolute numbers, Biden would have lost if a small amount of votes were different in key states. So when people say that the election was close, that is true in one sense. But it’s not true in the sense that the country is more closely divided than usual. If anything, the public was unusually decisive this year.
The People Want Democratic Governance
The Democratic Party has gotten more votes than the Republican Party in seven of the last eight national elections, including every election in which a current member of Congress was elected. If the question is “who does the American public think should be running the country?” the answer is obviously the Democratic Party. The fact that the system is unfairly biased in favor of the Republican party should not obscure that undeniable fact.
If Democrats want to win elections, the party needs to deal with the rules as they are, at least until they can be changed. It’s not enough to appeal to the American public as a whole. They need to appeal to the voters in strategically placed states. However, that should never obscure the fact that the country, taken as a whole, overwhelmingly supports Democrats and it’s only our foolish, outdated voting system that makes it appear otherwise.