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United States Presidential Election, 2020
In November 2020, there was a presidential election in the United States.
Background
There are two main parties in the United States that dominate presidential elections: the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.
In the 2016 Presidential Election, the Republican Party chose Donald Trump to be its presidential candidate, while Hillary Clinton was chosen by the Democrats. In the popular vote phase of the election, Donald Trump won 306 electoral votes against Hillary Clinton's 232. Although Clinton actually received more votes, due to the winner-take-all system in the United States, Trump won enough states (although by narrow margins) to win the election. In the electoral vote phase, Trump's electoral votes fell from 306 to 304, while Clinton's fell to 227.[1] Consequently, in January 2017, Trump became president of the United States. Since presidential elections are held every four years, the next election will be held in November 2020.
Nominations
Republican Party
Being the incumbent president, Trump had little competition in the Republican nomination.
Democratic Party
There was significant competition in the Democratic nomination. It emerged that the main candidates were Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders following Biden's win in the South Carolina Democratic Primary.[2] Joe Biden gained the delegate advantage, and following the primary elections Biden emerged as the winner with 2,687 delegates to Sanders' 1,073, with no other candidates reaching 100 delegates.[3]
Polls
In April 2020, the RealClearPolitics head-to-head average of Trump vs. Biden gave Biden the advantage with a national lead of 5.5%.[4] Biden maintained an edge in nationwide opinion polling, with his lead peaking at ten points in late June and concluding at +7.2%.[5] However, battleground polling tightened close to the election as pollsters from across the spectrum released their results, and RCP's final battleground average gave Biden a lead of 2.3%, which proved to be 2.27% points skewed toward Biden.[6] This final number gave Biden a 1.2 lead in Pennsylvania, Trump a 0.2 lead in North Carolina, Biden a 0.9 lead in Florida, Biden a 4.2 lead in Michigan, Biden a 6.7 lead in Wisconsin, and Biden a 0.9 lead in Arizona.[6]
Popular vote
The popular vote was held on November 3, 2020.[7]
