The Path to Presidency: 2020 Election Results

As Joe Biden ascends the steps of the White House, many are looking back at his path to the United States presidency. How did he beat the incumbent to the highest office in the nation, something that hadn’t been done since Bill Clinton trumped George H. W. Bush in 1992? The electoral votes determined the race, Biden: 306, Trump: 232, but let’s take a look behind those votes in Biden’s road to 270+. Which states were nearly unanimous and how did third parties fare this election cycle? All are shown on the map below.

View 2020 Election in a full screen map

The data is from Wikipedia’s ‘Results by state’ section of the 2020 United States presidential election page. You’re able to sort the map by Ticket & Party, the number of votes, percentage, and electoral votes. Let’s see which states were closest to unanimous in this unprecedented election.

Nearly Unanimous States

The Biden/Harris duo won the 2020 election with 306 electoral votes and 51.31% of the vote. Meanwhile, the Trump/Pence team exits the oval office with 232 electoral votes and 46.86% of the vote. But we wondered which areas of the country leaned more unanimously towards one pair of candidates or the other (or perhaps a third-party?). Find out where in the U.S. below.

Voters in the nation’s capital, Washington D.C., were 92.15% in favor of Joe Biden to be POTUS #46. This is up from 2016 in which 90.48% of D.C. voted blue. In fact, in all of the capital’s history as the only non-state to have electoral votes, theirs have never gone to the GOP. Both Maine and Nebraska split their electoral votes by congressional districts and Nebraska’s 3rd district had the second-highest percentage, in this case, 75.36% for Trump’s re-election.

The first state with a significant majority was Wyoming with 69.94% of voters casting ballots for Trump and Pence. West Virginia closely follows, along with Vermont, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, and Maryland for Biden. Meanwhile, North Dakotans and Idahoans showed up for Trump. Now let’s see how third parties did in 2020.

Third Parties With A Million Votes

A minor or third-party is one other than the two major parties, currently Democrat and Republican. In 2020, the largest third parties in the U.S. were the Libertarian Party, Green Party, and Constitution Party. So just how far did any third-party candidate make it in the 2020 election? No minor party took away electoral votes from either the Biden/Harris ticket or that of Trump/Pence (all 538 went to one or the other). However, a third-party ticket did score 1,865,720 votes.

Libertarian Party

The third-party ticket with 1,865,720 votes was Jo Jorgensen and Spike Cohen of the Libertarian Party. While that may seem like a lot, those million-plus votes make up just 1.18% of the total votes. Additionally, in comparison, Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson gained 4,489,221 votes in 2016 (3.28%).

Percentage-wise, Jorgensen and Cohen did best (over 2%) in the following 10 states: South Dakota (2.63%), North Dakota (2.60%), Utah (2.58%), Montana (2.53%), Alaska (2.47%), Nebraska’s 1st congressional district (2.33%), Kansas (2.23%), Nebraska (2.12%), Wyoming (2.08%), and Nebraska’s 2nd congressional district (2.03%). That leaves the other minor parties with thousands of votes in the 2020 presidential election.

The Green Party & Others

The other significant third-party player, Howie Hawkins and Angela Walker of the Green Party received 405,034 votes or 0.26% in total. In 2016, the Green Party’s Jill Stein had 1,457,216 or 1.07% total. The 2020 ticket did best in Maine’s 1st congressional district with 1.05% of the vote and the next best in Maine’s second district (0.95%).

Other parties, which amassed 627,567 votes (0.40%), included write-ins. To learn more about them, check out the map, or continue for how to make your own.

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