If you just look at the raw numbers, the 2020 election looks like a bit of a blowout. Joe Biden won the popular vote by over 7 million. That's a massive number. In fact, he hauled in more than 81 million votes, the most any candidate has ever received in American history. It felt decisive. But if you’ve lived through a few of these cycles, you know the popular vote is a bit of a vanity metric. It’s the Electoral College that actually moves the needle, and when you look at how close the 2020 election really was in the states that mattered, it’s enough to give any political strategist a permanent eye twitch.
Honestly, the whole thing came down to a few thousand people in a handful of states.
While the national margin was roughly 4.5%, the "tipping point" states—the ones that actually put a candidate over the 270 threshold—were razor-thin. We are talking about margins so small they could fit inside a high school football stadium.
The 43,000 Vote Gap
You might hear people say the election wasn't close because of the 306 to 232 Electoral College tally. That’s the same margin Donald Trump won by in 2016, which he famously called a "landslide." But the reality is that the 2020 finish was significantly tighter than 2016 in the places where it counted.
If you take just three states—Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin—the margin of victory for Biden was a combined total of about 43,000 votes.
Think about that for a second.
In an election where 158 million people cast a ballot, a shift of just 0.03% in the right places would have resulted in a 269-269 tie in the Electoral College. If that had happened, the election would have been thrown to the House of Representatives, where each state delegation gets one vote. Because Republicans controlled more state delegations at the time, Trump likely would have been re-elected despite losing the popular vote by millions.
It's sorta wild when you break it down by state:
- Arizona: Biden won by 10,457 votes (0.3% margin).
- Georgia: Biden won by 11,779 votes (0.2% margin).
- Wisconsin: Biden won by 20,682 votes (0.6% margin).
Wisconsin ended up being the "tipping point" state. If it had flipped, the path to 270 would have become a nightmare for the Democrats.
Why the Polls Felt So Off
We have to talk about the "Blue Shift" and why everyone was so confused on election night. If you went to bed early on Tuesday, you probably thought Trump had won. He was leading in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin by huge margins.
But because of the pandemic, a record number of people used mail-in ballots. In many of those "Blue Wall" states, the law didn't allow officials to start counting those mail-in votes until Election Day. Since Democrats were much more likely to vote by mail and Republicans were more likely to vote in person, we saw a "Red Mirage" followed by a slow "Blue Shift."
Experts like Dave Wasserman from the Cook Political Report had been warning about this for months. Yet, seeing it happen in real-time was still jarring. The polls also had a bit of a rough go. Most major aggregators, including FiveThirtyEight, had Biden leading the popular vote by about 8 points. He won by 4.5. That’s a significant "miss" that made the election feel much closer than the data suggested it would be.
The Rust Belt vs. The Sun Belt
The 2020 map was a tale of two different strategies. Biden managed to rebuild the "Blue Wall"—Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin—which Trump had famously shattered in 2016. But he did it by the skin of his teeth.
In Michigan, the margin was a relatively comfortable 154,000 votes. But Pennsylvania was much tighter, at about 80,000 votes. If Pennsylvania had stayed red, the math for Biden would have essentially required him to sweep the Sun Belt states like Arizona and Georgia, which were even closer.
Georgia was the biggest shocker. It hadn't gone for a Democrat since Bill Clinton in 1992. Biden’s win there by less than 12,000 votes was the result of massive turnout efforts in Atlanta and its suburbs, spearheaded by organizers like Stacey Abrams. It was a victory of inches.
What This Means for Future Elections
So, how close was the 2020 election in the grand scheme of things? It was one of the narrowest finishes in modern history.
It highlighted a growing divide in the American electorate. We are no longer a country where a candidate can win 40 states and cruise to victory. We are a country of "trench warfare" politics, where elections are decided in the suburbs of Phoenix, the counties surrounding Milwaukee, and the neighborhoods of Atlanta.
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One of the big takeaways is that "landslide" talk is basically dead for now. The Electoral College creates a system where the "closeness" of an election isn't about the 7 million people in California or New York who vote one way; it's about the 40,000 people in the Midwest who might change their minds at the last minute.
Actionable Insights for the Next Cycle
If you're trying to make sense of how these things work or preparing for 2024 and 2028, keep these things in mind:
- Ignore the National Polls: They tell you who is popular, but they don't tell you who is winning. Focus on state-level polling in the "Big Six" (AZ, GA, MI, PA, WI, NV).
- Watch the Margins, Not Just the Winner: A win by 0.2% is a mandate in name only. It suggests a deeply divided constituency that can flip back with the slightest nudge.
- The "Tipping Point" Matters Most: Always look for the state that provides the 270th electoral vote. In 2020, that was Wisconsin. In 2016, it was Pennsylvania. That state is the true barometer of the country's political center.
- Voter Turnout is King: In an election decided by 43,000 votes, a rainy day in one city or a successful "get out the vote" drive in one county can literally change the leader of the free world.
The 2020 election wasn't a blowout. It was a nail-biter that just happened to have a very large popular vote gap attached to it. Understanding that distinction is the key to understanding why American politics feels so high-stakes right now. Everything is decided on the margins.