Facts and Figures: 2020 Presidential Election (or "Biden's Claim to Fame")

Joe Biden claims to have had 81 million votes in the election.  Is this mathematically possible?

Election Year	Candidate + Number of Popular Votes Won	Candidate + Number of Popular Votes Won	Total Popular Votes Cast
2012	Obama: 65.9 million	Romney: 60.9 million	126.8 million (approximately)
2016	Clinton: 65.9 million	Trump: 63 million	128.9 million (1, 2)

We see from the above table that a total of 255.7 million votes were cast across the previous two presidential elections (126.8 + 128.9 = 255.7).  

The average amount of votes cast per year for each of those two years is 127.9 million votes (255.7 / 2 = 127.85 = 127.9). 

Now, let’s look at the percentage of the popular vote that each election winner obtained. 

• Obama 2012: 51.1 percent

• Trump 2016: 46.1 percent (see note)

The sum of these two numbers, added together, is 97.2 percent. 

Knowing this, we can now find the average percentage of the popular vote won by each winner.  That number is 48.6 percent (97.2 / 2 = 48.6).

For our third step, let’s assume that both the number of votes cast and the percentage of votes won by the election winner stayed about the same from 2016 to 2020.  This would mean that 127.9 million votes were cast, and that Biden won about 48.6 percent of those votes. 

Doing the math, we find that 48.6 percent of the total votes cast (our 127.9 million) equals about 62.2 million votes (127.9 * .486 = 62.159 = 62.16 = 62.2). 

Thus:

Assuming my calculations are correct, Biden won about 62.2 million votes, which is a difference of 18.8 million votes from the 81 million claimed (81 - 62.2 = 18.8). 

Now let’s look again at the number of votes cast, which I have estimated to be 127.9 million votes.  According to my calculations, in order for Biden to have won 48.6 percent of that vote amount, about 166.7 million votes in total would’ve needed to have been cast (81 / .486 = 166.666 = 166.67 = 166.7).

That’s 38.8 million more votes needed to be cast than our estimate of actual votes cast.  

Percentage-wise, this works out to about 23.3 percent more votes needed to be cast  (127.9 / 166.7 = 0.7672 = 0.767 = 76.7 percent; 100 - 76.7 = 23.3). 

Anyways, here’s the bottom line in all of this.

Having done the necessary math in this case, we can conclude that Joe Biden’s claim to have received “eighty-one million votes” is highly unlikely, if not impossible.  Realistically, he could’ve only won about 62.2 million votes, assuming previous vote averages. 

Therefore, to borrow a quote from the web site “PolitiFact”, I rate this claim…

..."pants on fire"

!

Note: In 2016, Donald Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton (46.1 percent to 48.2 percent, respectively), but won the electoral vote.

Sources:

1. “2012 United States Presidential Election.” Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_presidential_election. Accessed 20 Apr. 2022.

2. “2016 United States Presidential Election.” Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election. Accessed 20 Apr. 2022.