Every anti-Trumper should sit down and realize how close America came to re-electing Donald Trump in 2020.
Joe Biden, who defeated Trump in the electoral college 306-232, won the popular vote by roughly 7,050,000 – But the difference in the popular vote and the electoral college aren’t the numbers you should use to measure Biden’s victory.
The 2020 Presidential Election was competitive, but not close.
… Or was it close?
Bush vs Gore (2000) and Bush vs Kerry (2004) were far closer than Trump vs Biden in the electoral and popular vote tallies, and the difference in the popular vote margin for Biden vs Trump exceeded the same for Obama vs Romney (2012).
Biden’s win looks comfortable on the surface until we do a bit more digging.
Check out President Biden’s margins of victory in the states below and their number of electoral votes.
Georgia, 0.23% (11,779 votes) – 16 electoral votes
Arizona, 0.31% (10,457 votes) – 11 electoral votes
Wisconsin, 0.63% (20,682 votes) – 10 electoral votes
Biden won three states by less than 0.7 percent.
Of more than 154 million ballots cast across the country, just 43,700 Biden voters, enough to fill just half of some football stadiums, separated the winner from the loser.
Had Trump picked up just 21,000, 11,000, and 12,000 votes in Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia, respectively, he would have carried those states and won the election despite still losing the popular vote to Biden by 7 million.
In the above scenario, the electoral college would have been deadlocked at 269.
Advantage Trump.
So, what happens when no candidate reaches the magic number of 270?
Answer: U.S. House state delegations, each with one vote, pick the president. And, given Republicans outnumbered Democrats 26-23-1 in that category, President Trump would have undoubtedly been re-elected.
Democrats had a majority in the U.S. House but state delegations favored Republicans. That is why Trump is tried so hard to overturn a small percentage of votes in a few states. He paid for three recounts in Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia because he carried those states in 2016 and was convinced he could ‘find the necessary votes,’ legally or illegally, to secure the election.
In the end, not a lot kept him from winning.
Trump was so close to victory because 43,700 votes is such a small number in comparison to the 154,000,000 plus ballots accepted; Conversely, he was so far from winning because statewide margins of victory of 2,000 or more are nearly impossible to overturn.
And our election system is about as accurate and fraud-proof as it gets, so recounts seldom change the actual result by more than a few hundred votes.
So it still would have taken a colossal blunder and/or unprecedented fraud in order for Trump to have won just one of those three states (WI, GA, or AZ) after a recount.
Nevertheless, the real margin between victory and defeat (roughly 43,700 votes) is mind-numbing and exactly why EVERY VOTE COUNTS.
BIGGEST TAKEAWAY: Data shows Trump was very well-positioned to win in the event a few Biden supporters in three states decided to pass on voting.
Our democracy might have been saved by a tiny percentage of people in Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona who may not have felt like voting but did so anyway.
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