Talk:2020 United States presidential election

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Frequently asked questions

This section is here to provide answers to some questions that have been previously discussed on this talk page.

Note: This FAQ is only here to let people know that these points have previously been addressed, not to prevent any further discussion of these issues.

Q1: Why does the article call President Trump's statements about the integrity and legitimacy of the election "false"?

A1: Because reliable sources call his statements false. Though Trump often classifies these sources as "fake news", the consensus of other reliable non-news sources and Wikipedia editors is that they are reliable. As an encyclopedia, Wikipedia reflects these sources, which may not align with any one individual's statements on the matter. (See also WP:TRUTH)

Q2: Why does(n't) this article use [this specific source]?

A2: As mentioned above, Wikipedia is based on what reliable sources say. A basic definition of a reliable sources is that they publish reputable, accurate articles along with fact-checking them. Some sources are repeatedly discussed on if they are actually reliable with some sources being generally unreliable and should be avoided when possible or even deprecated which restricts their use to only articles describing themselves.

Q3: Why is Kanye West/Jo Jorgensen/Howie Hawkins/[other third party candidate] not included in the infobox at the top of this article?

A3: A consensus was reached in this discussion among Wikipedia editors to only include candidates who received at least 5% of the popular vote in the infobox. Changes to this decision must also reflect consensus.

This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

2020 United States presidential election was a good articles nominee, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. There may be suggestions below for improving the article. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
March 2, 2006	Articles for deletion	Deleted
October 30, 2015	Articles for deletion	Kept
November 1, 2015	Good article nominee	Not listed
March 1, 2017	Articles for deletion	Kept
A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on November 22, 2015. The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that potential candidates in the United States presidential election of 2020* include Tom Cotton, Hillary Clinton, and Kanye West?*
A news item involving this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "In the news" column on November 7, 2020.
Current status: Former good article nominee

While the biographies of living persons policy does not apply directly to the subject of this article, it may contain material that relates to living persons, such as friends and family of persons no longer living, or living persons involved in the subject matter. Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons must be removed immediately. If such material is re-inserted repeatedly, or if there are other concerns related to this policy, please see this noticeboard.

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This article has been mentioned by multiple media organizations:

Noam Cohen (October 26, 2020). "Wikipedia's Plan to Resist Election Day Misinformation". Wired.
Sara Morrison (November 2, 2020). "How Wikipedia is preparing for Election Day". Vox.

Warning: active arbitration remedies

The contentious topics procedure applies to this article. This article is related to post-1992 politics of the United States and closely related people, which is a contentious topic. Furthermore, the following rules apply when editing this article:

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With respect to the WP:1RR restriction:

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This article has been viewed enough times in a single year to make it into the Top 50 Report annual list. This happened in 2020, when it received 25,765,871 views.

This article has been viewed enough times in a single week to appear in the Top 25 Report 10 times. The weeks in which this happened:

Consensuses reached for the 2012 and 2016 elections apply for the 2020 election as well, unless these consensuses are reversed.

Consensus on infobox inclusion criteria (post-election):
A consensus has been reached to only include candidates who received at least 5% of the popular vote in the infobox.

Consensuses on pre-election presentation of candidates

Consensus on infobox inclusion criteria (pre-election):
A consensus has been reached to make it so that the political parties that earned at least one electoral vote in the previous election are to, by default, be included in the infobox of the article about the next election. This means that, as of right now, only the Republican and Democratic parties are to be included in the infobox. Currently, third parties are only to be included in the infobox prior to the election if they are polling, on average, over 5% per this consensus: Rfc on inclusion for the infobox.

Consensus on infobox inclusion criteria for state subpages (pre-election):
A consensus has been reached to include candidates in the infoboxes of state subpages who are polling at an average of at least 5% in a state or are the nominees of parties whose candidates received 5% in a state in the last election.

Consensus on the order of candidates in the infobox (pre-election):

Parties that got at least one electoral vote in the 2016 election will be the first to appear in the infobox and will be ordered by how many electoral votes they got in 2016. Since the Republican Party got 306 electoral votes and the Democratic Party got 232, the Republican Party will be the first to appear in the infobox and the Democratic Party will be the second.
Some political parties that may in the future be qualified to appear in the infobox did not get any electoral votes in 2016. They will be ordered by the total amount of electoral votes in the states that have ballot access. Write-in access counts too.
- If two or more parties have access to the same amount of electoral votes, they will be sorted by how many popular votes they got in 2016. If one of the parties did not participate in the 2016 election, they will be be ordered after the parties (with the access to the same amount of electoral votes) that did. If two or more parties both have access to the same amount of electoral votes and did not participate in the 2016 election, they will be sorted alphabetically by the candidates' names.

Consensus on the criteria for a potential candidate to be included in the article:

The "Publicly expressed interest" section requires only one source from the last six months where the individual is quoted as being interested in running in 2020. Social media posts do not count as public expressions of interest.
The "Potential candidates" section requires at least two sources speculating that an individual may run or where an individual talks about the 2020 election from any point after the 2016 election (since November 9, 2016). The sources must not be a list of several potential candidates nor a persuasive article about why a candidate should run.
The "Declined candidates" section requires at least two sources from any point after the 2016 election (since November 9, 2016). One source must be speculative in the same vein as the "Potential candidates" section, while the second must be a quoted denial from the individual in question.

The following images have been discussed:

Joe Biden (consensus link)

Consensus

Consensus on when to update the popular vote:

Initial: The popular vote tally and percentage should be updated twelve hours after polls close, and then every six hours thereafter.
Superseded: A consensus was agreed upon to shorten the time between updates.

Section sizes

Section size for 2020 United States presidential election (79 sections)
Section name	Byte count	Section total
(Top)	39,466	39,466
Background	17	12,355
Procedure	11,164	11,164
Simultaneous elections	1,174	1,174
Nominations	196	9,135
Democratic Party	2,397	2,397
Republican Party	1,950	1,950
Libertarian Party	1,620	1,620
Green Party	2,972	2,972
General election campaigns	33	128,998
Ballot access	3,588	3,588
Party conventions	9,594	9,594
Issues unique to the election	38	91,551
Impeachment	2,555	2,555
Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic	26,663	26,663
Foreign interference	20,693	20,693
Trump's potential rejection of election results	13,604	13,604
Election delay suggestion	4,029	4,029
Postal voting	10,475	10,475
Federal Election Commission issues	2,144	2,144
Supreme Court vacancy	8,013	8,013
Pre-election litigation	3,337	3,337
Debates	22,778	22,778
Polling	177	721
Two-way	118	118
Four-way	120	120
Swing states	306	306
Endorsements	273	273
Total cost estimate	460	460
Campaign issues	22	26,085
COVID-19 pandemic	5,085	5,085
Economy	3,094	3,094
Environment	1,917	1,917
Health care	2,537	2,537
Racial unrest	6,037	6,037
Predictions	7,393	7,393
Results	200	58,616
Statistics	17,855	17,855
Election calls	5,791	5,791
OSCE election monitoring	5,650	5,650
Electoral results	1,619	1,619
Results by state	20,831	20,831
States and EV districts that flipped from Republican to Democratic	211	211
Close states	3,731	3,731
County statistics	1,391	1,391
Maps	1,337	1,337
Voter demographics	20,708	38,919
Voting patterns by ethnicity	37	14,313
Hispanic and Latino voters	4,706	4,706
Black voters	2,206	2,206
Asian American and Pacific Island voters	1,533	1,533
Indian American voters	1,868	1,868
American Indian and Alaska Native voters	3,963	3,963
Polling accuracy	3,898	3,898
Aftermath	96	118,512
Election night	6,256	6,256
Late counting	21,212	21,212
Election protests	2,038	2,038
False claims of fraud	23,112	23,112
Lawsuits	4,406	6,890
Texas v. Pennsylvania	2,484	2,484
Trump's refusal to concede	5,972	5,972
GSA delays certifying Biden as president-elect	1,546	1,546
Attempts to delay or deny election results	5,891	5,891
Plot for state legislatures to choose electors	3,877	3,877
Pressure on state and local officials	6,518	6,518
Recounts	5,717	5,717
Electoral College votes	3,961	3,961
Certification and January 6th	16,131	16,131
Post-certification	3,258	3,258
Election audits	3,507	3,507
Viewership	2,530	2,530
See also	293	293
Notes	87	87
References	5,167	5,167
Further reading	3,253	5,306
Voter fraud	1,109	1,109
Policy implications	944	944
External links	1,579	1,579
Total	444,518	444,518

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Coup d'etat?

In the lead it says,

Before, during, and after Election Day, Trump and numerous other Republicans engaged in an aggressive and unprecedented attempt to subvert the election and overturn the results, falsely alleging widespread voter fraud and trying to influence the vote-counting process in swing states, in what was described by many as an attempted coup d'état.

Wouldn't it be a self coup since Trump was in power at the time? Maurnxiao (talk) 19:06, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This does seem to be the more accurate term. I've found several good sources calling it a self-coup (Brookings, the journal Gov't and Opposition, Politico, etc). I support this change. Gowser (talk) 16:30, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Turns out that self-coup is a form of coup d'etat. I think it's worth adding the more precise term, feel free to revert. Gowser (talk) 16:43, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! Maurnxiao (talk) 20:59, 22 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Close states" section is illegible on Dark Mode

Using Wikipedia's new dark mode, the "Close states" section of the article has legibility problems. The dark red lines are odd but readable, while the dark blue lines are completely unreadable. Similarly, the "County statistics" section following it has problems with the dark blue percentages. If this could be improved, us dark mode Wikipedians would be very thankful! Thunderforge (talk) 19:14, 23 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Change Joe Biden portrait back to Joe_Biden_2013.jpg

I feel like we should change Joe Biden's portrait on this article back to the portrait used before he was president. This would make it consistent with the previous US presidential election pages on Wikipedia. Eehuiio (talk) 16:08, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 12 September 2024

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

the article states incorrectly that “This was the first time since 1980, and the first for Republicans since 1892 that a party was voted out after a single four-year term.”

This is incorrect as H.W. Bush a republican lost his re-election bid (after 4 years in office) in 1992.

Thisin the results section just after the [311] reference link 64.43.157.5 (talk) 22:50, 12 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not done HW Bush followed two terms of Reagan, three GOP terms in a row. Party is the key word there. Trump served one term between two Democrats. 331dot (talk) 22:59, 12 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]