Attempts To Delay Or Deny Election Results
Republican reactions to Donald Trump’s claims of 2020 election fraudTexas v. Pennsylvaniaamicus curiae
In November, Trump focused his efforts on trying to delay vote certifications at the county and state level. On December 2, Trump posted a 46-minute video to his social media in which he repeated his baseless claims that the election was “rigged” and fraudulent and called for either the state legislatures or the courts to overturn the results of the election and allow him to stay in office. He continued to apply pressure to elected Republicans in Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania in an unprecedented attempt to overturn the election result. Some commentators have characterized Trump’s actions as an attempted coup d’état or self-coup.
On December 15, the day after the electoral college vote, Republican Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, who was previously among those who would not recognize the election results, publicly accepted Biden’s win, saying, “Today, I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden.”
In a December 21 news conference, outgoing Attorney General William Barr disavowed several actions reportedly being considered by Trump, including seizing voting machines, appointing a special counsel to investigate voter fraud, and appointing one to investigate Hunter Biden.
An Examination Of The 2020 Electorate Based On Validated Voters
By Ruth Igielnik, Scott Keeter and Hannah Hartig
Pew Research Center conducted this study to understand how Americans voted in 2020 and how their turnout and vote choices differed from 2016 and 2018. For this analysis, we surveyed U.S. adults online and verified their turnout in the three general elections using commercial voter files that aggregate official state turnout records. Panelists for whom a record of voting was located are considered validated voters all others are presumed not to have voted.
We surveyed 11,818 U.S. adults online in November 2020, 10,640 adults in November 2018 and 4,183 adults in November and December 2016. The surveys were supplemented with measures taken from annual recruitment and profile surveys conducted in 2018 and 2020. Everyone who took part is a member of Pew Research Centers American Trends Panel , an online survey panel recruited through national, random sampling of telephone numbers or, since 2018, residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The surveys are weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education, turnout and vote choice in the three elections, and many other characteristics. Read more about the ATPs methodology.
Here are the questions used for this report and its methodology.
Validated voters, defined
Here are some of the other key findings from the analysis:
Pressure On State And Local Officials
As the Trump campaign’s lawsuits were repeatedly rejected in court, Trump personally communicated with Republican local and state officials in at least three states, including state legislators, attorneys general, and governors who had supported him in the general election and continued to support him. He pressured them to overturn the election results in their states by recounting votes, throwing out certain votes, or getting the state legislature to replace the elected Democratic slate of Electoral College members with a Republican slate of electors chosen by the legislature. In late November, he personally phoned Republican members of two county electoral boards in Michigan, trying to get them to reverse their certification of the result in their county. He then invited members of the Michigan state legislature to the White House, where they declined his suggestion that they choose a new slate of electors. He repeatedly spoke to the Republican governor of Georgia and the secretary of state, demanding that they reverse their state’s election results, threatening them with political retaliation when they did not, strongly criticizing them in speeches and tweets, and demanding that the governor resign.
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Why Does It Matter
Wisconsin sided with the Democratic candidate in all presidential elections from 1988 through 2012, although sometimes by very narrow margins. In 2016, Trump managed to flip the state despite his underdog status in the polls.
Americans are also electing members to the two chambers of Congress, the main law-making body of the US. Those chambers are the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Without support in the Senate and the House, the president’s ability to enact key policies is severely limited.
The winner of the election is determined through a system called the electoral college. Each of the 50 states, plus Washington DC, is given a number of electoral college votes, adding up to a total of 538 votes. More populous states get more electoral college votes than smaller ones.
A candidate needs to win 270 electoral college votes to win the election.
In every state except two Maine and Nebraska the candidate that gets the most votes wins all of the states electoral college votes.
Due to these rules, a candidate can win the election without getting the most votes at the national level. This happened at the last election, in which Donald Trump won a majority of electoral college votes although more people voted for Hillary Clinton across the US.
Voting Methods In The 2020 Presidential Election
The 2020 election brought a huge change in howAmericans cast their ballots. As some states looked to adapt to challenges in administering elections amid the COVID-19 pandemic, large numbers of voters were offered expanded access to absentee and vote-by-mail options in the 2020 election. As a result, a record number of voters said they cast their ballots this way . And smaller shares of voters said they either voted in person on Election Day or in person before Election Day .
A majority of absentee voters said they had previously voted this way before the 2020 election . Still, a sizable share said the November election was the first time they had cast an absentee or mail ballot.
Sizable shares of voters across racial and ethnic subgroups cast absentee or mail-in ballots in the 2020 election though there are some differences in voting methods when comparing across groups. White voters were most likely to say they voted in person on Election Day . Comparably smaller shares of Black and Hispanic voters said the same.
Black voters were more likely than White or Hispanic voters to say they cast their ballot in person before Election Day .
Voters ages 65 and older stand out in their voting behavior: 55% say they voted absentee or by mail in the 2020 election 13 percentage points higher than the share of adults under 65 who cast a ballot by mail.
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I Dont Want The Clinton Legacy Continued In The White House
Trump is a self-made man. Regardless of getting a hefty loan from his father, he used that money to make a name and legacy for himself. I hope that Trumps experience as a businessman will enable our country to operate more effectively when it comes to managing our money.
I want to change America to serve the people instead of a political system that wants to serve itself. My life wont change much, except I will have more hope that my government is trying to make our country strong instead of pandering to its own liberal interests. My main hope is that he will help balance our budget, and secondly that he will help our economy to remain strong.
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I dont want the Clinton legacy continued in the White House. We impeached one Clinton, and there is too much scandal that revolves around the other. Why would I want that legacy in my government?
He may say controversial things, but at least he tells you what he thinks. I certainly disagree with anyone that has behaved in a racist or sexist way. However, I feel like I know where I stand with Trump. He says what he thinks, right or wrong, and I know what Im dealing with.
Rachael, 34, Indiana, small business owner
Joe Biden Breaks Obama’s Record For Most Votes Ever Cast For A Us Presidential Candidate
In 2008, Barack Obama earned 69,498,516 votes in the presidential election, the most ever. Now, Mr. Obama’s former vice president, Joe Biden, has far surpassed that tally, setting a new record with more than 81,284,000 votes in the 2020 election.
With voter turnout in record territory, President Donald Trump also exceeded Mr. Obama’s record, with over 74,221,000 votes .
On Saturday morning, November 7, CBS News projected Mr. Biden will be the 46th president after winning the battleground state of Pennsylvania. He secured a total of 306 electoral votes, to Mr. Trump’s 232.
Mr. Biden leads in the popular vote nationwide by more than 7 million votes. Winning the popular vote, however, does not secure the election in 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes but still lost the election to Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump won several large battleground states, including Ohio, Florida and Texas, which Democrats had hoped could flip blue this year. But Mr. Biden prevailed in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, three key states Mr. Trump turned red in 2016.
Find full results for all races in the CBS News Election Center.
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Trump Should Not Run For President In 2024 Majority Of Americans Say
As former President Donald Trump considers launching another bid for the White House, more than six in 10 Americans do not want him to run in 2024, according to a new PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll. And while Trumps possession of more than 10,000 government documents at his Florida home seems not to have changed the minds of his steady supporters, a plurality of Americans think he has done something illegal.
The level of support for another Trump campaign remains virtually unchanged from December 2020, the month after he lost the presidential election and weeks before a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an effort to stop the certification of the Electoral College votes.
His numbers dont move. Theyre locked in, said Lee Miringoff, the director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion. The good thing for former President Trump is his numbers dont drop. The bad thing is hes only talking about a third of the electorate who are in his corner.
Graphics by Megan McGrew
Thats not a great place to launch an election campaign, he added.
Just 28 percent of independents believe Trump should run again, this poll found, while two-thirds say the former president should sit out the next election. According to 2020 exit polling, 41 percent of independents had voted for Trumps reelection, suggesting a significant cratering of support since.
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Graphic by Megan McGrew
Certification Of Electoral College Votes
The 117th United States Congress first convened on January 3, 2021, and was scheduled to count and certify the Electoral College votes on January 6, 2021. There were 222 Democrats and 212 Republicans in the House there were 51 Republicans, 46 Democrats, and two independents in the Senate. Several Republican members of the House and Senate said they would raise objections to the reported count in several states, meeting the requirement that if a member from each body objects, the two houses must meet separately to discuss whether to accept the certified state vote. A statement from the vice president’s office said Pence welcomes the plan by Republicans to “raise objections and bring forward evidence” challenging the election results.
On December 28, 2020, Representative Louie Gohmert filed a lawsuit in Texas challenging the constitutionality of the Electoral Count Act of 1887, claiming Vice President Pence has the power and ability to unilaterally decide which slates of electoral votes get counted. The case was dismissed on January 1, 2021, for lack of both standing and jurisdiction. The plaintiffs filed an appeal, and the appeal was dismissed by a three-judge panel of the appeals court the next day.
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Reality Check: Who Voted For Donald Trump
Donald Trump has beaten Hillary Clinton in the race to be president of the United States.
Much of the narrative ahead of the election had been that Mr Trump was supported by angry, white men. To get an insight into which groups actually voted for him, you can look at the exit poll conducted across the country by Edison Research for the National Election Pool, a consortium of ABC News, The Associated Press, CBS News, CNN, Fox News and NBC News.
It is very difficult to get a genuinely representative sample of how more than 120 million people have voted. It is a big survey – of almost 25,000 voters – and they are the best figures available, but they should be used with caution.
It throws up some odd results, such as that 10% of people who support the idea of a wall along the Mexican border nonetheless voted for Mrs Clinton, while 5% of people who thought the next president should continue the policies of Barack Obama voted for Mr Trump.
Bear in mind that the proportions are unlikely to add up to 100%, because not everybody answered all the questions and there were other candidates standing in the election, who received about 5% of the votes.
The poll suggests that 53% of men voted for Mr Trump, with 41% voting for Mrs Clinton – those proportions are almost exactly reversed for women.
Looking specifically at white women, they favoured Mr Trump, with 53% supporting him compared with 43% for Mrs Clinton.
Voting Patterns In The 2020 Election
The 2020 election featured continuity in the voting patterns of major demographic and political groups in the population, but there were a few important shifts. The gender gap in the 2020 election was narrower than it had been in 2016 as Democrats made gains among men and Republicans made gains among women. In the 2016 election, Donald Trump won men by 11 percentage points while Hillary Clinton won women by 15 points . In the 2018 election, Democrats substantially narrowed the gap with men while maintaining an 18-point lead among women. In the 2020 election, men again divided nearly evenly , while Bidens advantage narrowed to 11 points among women .
Similarly, as Biden increased his level of support among White men in the 2020 election relative to Clintons in 2016, Trump gained among White women, which had the effect of further narrowing the gender gap among White voters. In 2016, Trump won White men by 30 points . That gap narrowed to a 17-point margin for Trump in 2020 . White women, a group sometimes categorized as swing voters and who broke nearly evenly in 2016 , favored him in 2020 .
Biden received the support of 92% of Black voters, nearly the same as Clinton received in 2016 and Democratic candidates for the U.S. House received in 2018.
Party and ideology
Age and generation
Geography
Religion
White non-evangelical Protestants voted for Trump over Biden by a 14-point margin , while Black Protestants were an overwhelmingly Democratic group .
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What Young Voters Have To Say
Many young first-time voters tell CNBC Make It that racial justice is among their top concerns.
“Black Lives Matter, police reform, that stuff right now is at the forefront of my mind,” says Jada Martin, a 21-year-old student at Strausberg University, originally from Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
“From racial justice to health care to the state of our planet, there’s a lot at stake right now and climate change really incorporates it all into one single issue that we really have a timestamp to tackle within the next 10 years,” says John Paul Mejia, an 18-year organizer with Sunrise Movement from Miami, Florida. “And knowing that we can’t face four more years of a Trump presidency is what really galvanized me to not only bring myself out to vote, but my communities as well.”
Unsurprisingly, young voters on the left and right say that the communities they were raised in have significantly impacted their political opinions.
“The issues that my age group and I most care about are issues that include immigration, reproductive rights, climate change, health care unemployment among so many others,” says Adela Aguirre, a 20-year-old college student from Boulder, Colorado. “The biggest issue for me that I focused on while voting was immigration, for sure. I have friends and family that are undocumented. So my vote definitely represented them.”
Walden’s sister is currently battling coronavirus.
I Want Conservative Laws
I cried when I left the polling location because I dont like Trump at all. I was deeply saddened to vote for him. His personality, his mannerisms and his inexperience repulse me. I wish there had been another conservative choice without simply throwing away my vote. I know if I travel outside of the US I will be deeply disliked because of him.
However, he is only a four-year investment and I am trusting in the checks and balances of our country to prevent him and his poor-judgment from damaging the country too much. Hopefully Trump will not affect my daily life.
I personally do not have a gun but I strongly support the right to bear arms recognising it as a right that ensures protection from government tyranny. I am also against abortions.
Trump has the opportunity to elect a supreme court member, maybe even two or three members considering the current health and age of some justices. Justices serve for a lifetime and I do not want the justices to be liberal. I want conservative laws therefore conservative justices.
I can deal with a somewhat low four years, but I couldnt deal with a supreme court that swings liberal and I couldnt deal with losing gun rights. I hope the years fly by and that he will do as little damage as possible. I am deeply saddened by these options and I am not proud of our president in the least.
Andrea, Florida
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