Biden wins US election 2020: how many popular votes did he get vs other presidents?
Joe Biden will be the new US president after breaking Obama’s popular vote record with almost 75 million, the most ever cast for a presidential candidate.
It’s official. Joe Biden will be the new president of the United States. And he will replace Donald Trump in the White House having accrued almost 75 million votes (50.6%), the most ever cast for a presidential candidate in United States history.
The American voting system is divided into two elements with the popular vote and the electoral college vote. The popular vote is a count of every legitimate ballot that is submitted, while the electoral college vote is a representative count relative to the size of each state’s congressional delegation.
It’s the seventh time in the last eight presidential elections that the Democratic presidential candidate has won the popular vote (1992, 1996, 2000, 2008, 2012 and 2016).
Biden breaks Obama’s record in popular votes...
Joe Biden will enter the Oval Office in January having made history. Barack Obama had set the previous all-time record with 69,498,516 votes in 2008 (against John McCain), while he got 65,915,795 in his re-election in 2012 (facing Mitt Romney).
Biden's performance is incredible considering the voter enthusiasm - especially among young people - that his former boss had in 2008.
... but so does Trump
Even if his time at the presidency is over, the incumbent Donald Trump - who had already falsely claimed he had won the 2020 election - can leave the White House finding some satisfaction in knowing he has also surpassed Obama’s record in popular votes, as the Republican got more than 70.5 million.
However, he might go home also knowing that he has become the first president since Benjamin Harrison in 1892 to have lost the popular vote twice in successive election cycles, after losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016 by a margin of 2,868,686 million votes (then he was elected president with 62,984,828 million). He's also got some lawsuits to worry about as he's about to lose the presidential immunity of the past few years.
George W. Bush topped the list until 2008
Former US president George W. Bush was until 2008 the US president with most votes. He got 62,040,610 million in his re-election back in 2004, when he beat John Kerry. Then he got 3,012,171 million more than his Democrat opponent.
When he was first elected president in 2000, Bush had 50,460,110 million votes, which means 11,580,000 million less than in 2004, the lowest number of popular votes in 20 years.