In Focus: How Joe Biden Won the White House
| Author | Benjamin D. Hennig |
| Published date | 01 December 2020 |
| Date | 01 December 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/2041905820978837 |
18 POLITICAL INSIGHT • DECEMBER 2020
In Focus
The 2020 presidential election in
the United States was very similar
to the vote four years previously
in one crucial respect: drama. In
2016, Donald Trump took the White House
without winning the popular vote. This had
only happened four times previously in US
history.
This November, all eyes were again on the
Electoral College system that decides the
president based on votes from each state.
Counting Electoral College votes once again
was a major part of the drama. Early counts
indicated the possibility that incumbent
President Trump could once again defy the
odds and win the Electoral College in 2020,
despite losing the popular vote.
As soon as ballot boxes were open it was
clear that the races in key states such as
Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin would
be very tight. But this time around, the
Democratic challenger Joe Biden, managed
to ip a number of states won by Trump in
2016 to take the White House.
Biden’s overall winning margin in the
popular vote was much larger than that of
Hillary Clinton last time out. At the time of
writing, less than a week after polls closed,
Biden’s lead in the popular vote stands at
more than four million, or over six per cent
ahead of the total vote.
Although it took four tense days for
Biden’s majority in the Electoral College to
be conrmed, the Democrat’s lead in the
popular vote never seemed at risk. With an
unprecedentedly high voter participation,
both candidates ended up with unusually
high voter numbers, resulting in Biden
becoming the President with the largest
number of votes in US history.
Trump responded to the prospect of
defeat by announcing a series of legal
challenges. Few experts gave these
initiatives much chance of success, but they
could slightly alter the eventual nal results.
The maps in this article were therefore
produced with a certain degree of caution.
While the overall outcome is unlikely to
change, there may be minor shifts in the
vote distribution. However, as long as this
does not produce a change in any state’s
result – which few expect – this will not
aect the Electoral College vote.
The Electoral College vote is displayed
in the hexagon-shape cartogram (shown
in the bottom map). Here, each hexagon
represents a federal state and is then resized
according to the total number of votes
that this state has in the Electoral College.
Therefore, this map is an accurate depiction
of the political realities that determine the
vote of the next president.
On a conventional map, in contrast,
Trump’s defeat is relativised due to his
largest success in some of the states with
relatively large size but relatively low
populations (and low Electoral College
votes). Hence, these states become over-
represented in a normal map (shown in the
top map).
Yet neither land nor the electors provide
a fully adequate representation of how
the people voted, since both distort the
population distribution of the electorate – as
in 2016, when Trump won by tight margins,
particularly in crucial ‘Rustbelt’ states despite
losing the popular vote. The reality of how
votes are distributed is best seen through
a population-weighted cartogram where
each state is proportional to the number of
people who live in it (shown in the middle
map).
Florida is often seen as essential for any
presidential victory. But that old maxim did
not prove true this time around. Although
Trump held ‘the Sunshine state’, he lost out
in the three aforementioned tight states of
Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well
as Michigan and (very likely) also Georgia.
Both the conventional map and the
population cartogram also show a gradual
colour scheme related to the overall vote
share of the (projected) winning candidate.
Here, further insights can be gleaned as to
how divided the country really is, regardless
of how decisive the outcome of the Electoral
College may appear. Putting some of the
respective strongholds of both parties
aside – along the west coast and northeast
for the Democrats, and across the central
mid-western states for the Republicans –
winning vote shares for either candidate
were between 45 and 55 per cent, both in
Southern states from Arizona to Texas and
across the Rustbelt around the Great Lakes.
Once the dust has settled on the
heated atmosphere that characterised
the early days after the election, the wider
implications of a hugely divided country
will be the largest challenge for the next
presidency and most likely for many more
to follow.
The outgoing President may have
changed US politics in the past four years,
yet this was only made possible through
the divisions that had been building up in
American society long before Trump took
the White House. This is the United States
that Biden will inherit.
Benjamin D. Hennig is Professor of
Geography at the University of Iceland
and Honorary Research Associate at the
University of Oxford.
How Joe Biden Won
the White House
Benjamin D. Hennig maps the 2020 US presidential election.
Political Insight December 2020 BU.indd 18Political Insight December 2020 BU.indd 18 10/11/2020 15:4610/11/2020 15:46
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