# Evidence Trump won/Biden lost the 2020 Election **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Tags:** trump\ **Created:** [September 6, 2022, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-trump-won-biden-lost-the-2020-election/971075 "2022-09-06T18:28:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/marvin_the_martian/32/2898_2.png) [@Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marvin_the_Martian)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2022, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-trump-won-biden-lost-the-2020-election/971075/21 "2022-09-08T00:40:01Z")
The 2000 Florida vote was essentially a coin flip thanks to the “butterfly ballot” in Palm Beach County: [https://www.jstor.org/stable/3117714](https://www.jstor.org/stable/3117714) No amount of recounting could fix that problem. The abstract from that paper: > We show that the butterfly ballot used in Palm Beach County, Florida, in the 2000 presidential election caused more than 2,000 Democratic voters to vote by mistake for Reform candidate Pat Buchanan, a number larger than George W. Bush’s certified margin of victory in Florida. We use multiple methods and several kinds of data to rule out alternative explanations for the votes Buchanan received in Palm Beach County. > Among 3,053 U.S. counties where Buchanan was on the ballot, Palm > Beach County has the most anomalous excess of votes for him. In Palm Beach County, Buchanan’s proportion of the vote on election-day ballors is > four times larger than his proportion on absentee (nonbutterfly) ballors, but Buchanan’s proportion does not differ significantly between election-day and absentee ballots in any other Florida county. Unlike other Reform candidates in Palm Beach County, Buchanan tended to receive election-day votes in Democratic precincts and from individuals who voted for the Democratic U.S, Senate candidate. Robust estimation of overdispersed binomial regression models underpins much of the analysis. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2022, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-trump-won-biden-lost-the-2020-election/971075/22 "2022-09-08T00:55:47Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > On top of that, there was/is also wild overoptimism. I used to frequent an LSU Tigers message board that was rabidly MAGA. Up til Election Day 2020, there were predictions like “Trump will win 70% of the popular vote” (serious, not joking) and threads asking, “Can Trump carry California or New York?” When people are **that** deluded about how red they imagine America to be, it comes as a terrible shock when Biden in fact wins, and they can’t believe it (“How could Trump fall from my expected 70% of the popular vote down to just 47%? It must be CHEATING!”) This may be some of it - and also those in heavily red areas who don’t believe blue areas really exist. I ran into one person who said that Dems had to cheat because Nancy Pelosi won. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t joking, but he never responded when I pointed out that her district is perhaps the bluest in the country. But if you live in the middle of Mississippi I can you can’t understand why anyone would vote for her. So it’s “No one I know voted for Biden.” It works the other way also. ---
**Author:** ![Guest-starring\_Id](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guest-starring_id/32/21736_2.png) [@Guest-starring\_Id](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guest-starring_Id)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2022, 5:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-trump-won-biden-lost-the-2020-election/971075/23 "2022-09-08T05:37:49Z")
Too bad Sean Spicer isn’t reading this thread, who could’ve gone on an absolute gish gallop, as he did with Bill Maher, with all the necessary “evidence”. ETA: Upon watching it again on youtube - not as much of a gish gallop I thought it was, as well as the attempt(s) crushed to oblivion by BM anyway. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/evidence-trump-won-biden-lost-the-2020-election/971075.md?page=1)