The Left has prosecuted former President Trump with unabated focus on one issue more than all the others combined - that he is an election denier when he refused to concede the 2020 results.
We have news for the Left based on the results of the 2024 election. Trump likely won in 2020, and he was correct in sticking to his belief that the results were rigged to favor his opponent.
As of Thursday morning, nearly all states had completed their 2024 vote counts. Vice President Kamala Harris has 74.4 million votes (48.25%) to President-elect Trump's 76.9 million votes (49.87%).
Update on Dec 8, 2024
TIPP estimates that the total yet-to-be-counted votes are approximately 2 million. Assuming a 55-45 split for Harris in the remaining Blue states (California ratio=58.7% to 38.1%), Harris's vote totals would increase by about 1.1 million and Trump's by about 0.9 million. This would place Kamala Harris at around 75.5 million total votes and Trump at 77.8 million, a decisive popular vote victory for Trump. Third-party candidates took in 2.9 million votes from a total electorate of 156.2 million.
[In some battleground states, like Michigan, Democrats denied RFK Jr.'s request to not remain on the ballot after he had withdrawn and endorsed Trump. The Democrats wanted to force Trump's vote to split and help propel Harris to victory. The plot failed as Trump comfortably carried all seven battlegrounds].
According to the certified 2020 results, the total number of votes cast was 158.4 million, with Biden receiving 81.3 million, Trump receiving 74.2 million, and third-party candidates receiving 2.92 million. 2020 was also the year when COVID-19 attacked the world with a vengeance. Many people, including candidates Biden and Harris, mostly stayed home.
The chart below compares voter support for Democrats and Republicans across four presidential elections. It shows Trump’s 2024 total of 77.8 million votes surpassing Harris’s 75.5 million and Biden’s 2020 high of 81.3 million.
As America's population grew from 335.9 million in 2020 to 341.8 million in 2024, there were technically 1.8% more voters in 2024 than in 2020. Biden-Harris unleashed the power of the federal bureaucracy, using work-study programs to get college students to drive up voter registrations. Harris raised more than $1 billion and spent massively on voter mobilization and outreach during the 107 days she was a candidate, a record. She springboarded off the impressive campaign infrastructure that Biden had been assembling for years. Many states stepped up same-day voter registrations. Both sides campaigned on the theme that 2024 was the most consequential election of our times.
Despite one of the most considerable get-out-to-vote efforts in recent memory, with paid staff knocking on millions of doors before the elections, how could there be 2.2 million fewer total voters in 2024 than in 2020? Even more vexing, Harris, as a trailblazing woman candidate of color, won 5.8 million fewer votes than Biden. Did that many Democrats not go to the polls? They couldn't have voted for third-party candidates because the 2020 and 2024 totals for third-party candidates were identical. We acknowledge that some of Biden's 2020 voters could have switched to Trump in 2024, who increased his performance by 3.5 million. Even if you assume all those were erstwhile Biden supporters, even though the GOP worked hard to boost new voters, where did 2.3 million votes go?
Biden was a lackluster candidate in 2020, placing fourth and fifth, respectively, in Iowa and New Hampshire primaries. How could Biden have won 15 million (24.6%) more votes than history-making candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in 2008 and 2016, respectively?
Trump received 11 million more votes in his 2020 reelection bid than he did in his 2016 victory, but still lost. This situation - where a candidate received more votes in their reelection bid than they did in their first election but still lost the race - hasn't happened since 1892. [In 1888, Benjamin Harrison defeated incumbent president Grover Cleveland despite Cleveland winning the popular vote. When Harrison ran for reelection in 1892, he received more votes than in 1888 but still lost the election to Grover Cleveland].
For decades, 20 bellwether counties around the country have historically predicted the winner. Vigo County, Indiana, has consistently voted for the winning candidate since 1956. Valencia County, New Mexico, has voted with the winner since 1952. Trump won 19 of the 20 bellwether counties but still lost the 2020 election. Critics of this analysis said that bellwethers are not reliable indicators because of demographic shifts. However, the bellwethers again stood in 2024. Although New Mexico went for Harris, Valencia County went for Trump 57-41. Indiana decidedly went for Trump, as did Vigo County, 58-40.
Are we to believe that 2020 was such a strange year that every anomaly magically aligned to give Biden a victory when he did not even campaign?
Election integrity is a crucial element of democracy, but officials at every level took a callous position during the 2020 campaign. Under William Barr, the DOJ refused to investigate how last-minute mail balloting changes and vote-curing methods affected the integrity of the election. The courts routinely dismissed Trump's challenges not based on merit but on technicalities, like standing.
The J6 Committee, which spent millions of taxpayer dollars investigating January 6 for over 18 months, had all the resources and the time to answer a simple question. Why did tens of thousands of Trump supporters gather at the Ellipse on that day? The partisan committee never looked into the causes that triggered the devastating events of January 6, something that one would expect an investigating committee to do.
A CNN poll from July 2023 revealed that 69% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents view Biden's 2020 win as illegitimate. Trump and his supporters have a plethora of reasons to question the outcome. Simply dismissing these concerns as a “big lie,” as Jake Tapper and the thought police at CNN do, doesn’t negate the importance of examining them with sincerity—truth doesn’t simply transmute into a lie because someone labels it so.
