A poll worker directs a voter to a polling station for early voting in Miami, Florida on Oct. 21Joe Raedle/Getty Images
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A chart circulating on social media has reinvigorated debunked claims about voting irregularities in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
Posted to X on Wednesday by far-right economics and politics site Zero Hedge and amplified by other accounts, the chart has been seen at least 20 million times. We are not linking directly to these posts so they are not amplified further.
The chart purports to show voter turnout in the past four elections, and misleadingly suggests that the relatively high vote totals in 2020 are evidence of irregularities. President-elect Donald Trump has never conceded defeat in the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden, and his false claims of widespread voter fraud are likely being referenced here.
Annotated screenshot of a chart posted to X by Zero Hedge on Nov. 6.X
Vote counting still underway
Votes from Tuesday’s election are still being counted, so comparisons with previous races are not accurate. Voter turnout in 2024 is expected to be lower than in 2020 (more on that below). Election officials and agencies monitoring the vote have reported no significant issues this time around, and claims of widespread fraud in 2020 have been debunked multiple times.
The vertical axis of the chart also gives a misleading impression of the relative difference in vote count. It starts at 50 million, rather than zero, exaggerating the apparent difference in column heights.
Mr. Biden won the electoral college with 306 votes to Mr. Trump’s 232 in 2020, and the popular vote by more than seven million ballots. Many battleground states conducted recounts or thorough reviews of their results, all of which confirmed Mr. Biden’s victory. An Associated Press investigation in 2021 found fewer than 475 instances of confirmed voter fraud across six battleground states – nowhere near the magnitude required to sway the outcome of the presidential election.
“As we have said repeatedly, our election infrastructure has never been more secure and the election community never better prepared to deliver safe, secure, free, and fair elections for the American people,” U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director Jen Easterly said in a statement Wednesday. “This is what we saw [Tuesday] in the peaceful and secure exercise of democracy. Importantly, we have no evidence of any malicious activity that had a material impact on the security or integrity of our election infrastructure.”
Democratic candidate Kamala Harris had won about 69 million votes as of Friday morning, compared to the approximately 81 million Joe Biden won in 2020 – a difference of about 12 million. That gap is decreasing as the vote count continues. No state has counted 100 per cent of its ballots yet.
Mr. Trump is lagging behind his 2020 popular vote total of 74,223,975 by about 750,000.
Lower turnout and a shift in support away from Democrats
Overall voter participation was lower in 2024 than in 2020.
A U.S. Census Bureau report said 66.8 per cent of citizens 18 years or older voted in 2020. Voter participation is projected to be around 65 per cent in 2024.
AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters across the United States, showed a shift in votes away from Ms. Harris among Hispanics, with narrow gains among women and a modest increase of support among men for Mr. Trump.
With a report from The Associated Press