Fact focus: A multimillion vote gap between 2020 and 2024 fuels false election narratives

Less than 24 hours after Donald Trump was elected the 47th president of the United States, social media users began pushing two conflicting narratives to suggest election fraud, one that revived false claims by Trump that the 2020 vote was stolen from him and the other questioning how Vice President Kamala Harris could have received so many fewer votes in 2024 than President Joe Biden in 2020.

Both narratives hinge on a supposed 20 million vote gap between Harris and Biden.

Here’s a closer look at the facts.

Claim: President Joe Biden won approximately 20 million more votes in the 2020 election than Vice President Kamala Harris earned in the 2024 race, proving either that Trump has cheated his way to a second term or that there was widespread fraud four years ago.

The facts: The claims are unfounded. Votes from Tuesday’s presidential election are still being counted, so any comparison with previous races would not be accurate. In addition, election officials and agencies monitoring the vote have reported no significant issues with Tuesday’s election. Claims of widespread fraud in 2020 have been debunked countless times.

“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,” Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly said in a statement. “This is what we saw yesterday 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.”

Multiple Pennsylvania officials, including Gov. Josh Shapiro, said that they had not seen any signs of cheating and called the election secure after Trump said in a Truth Social post Tuesday that there was “a lot of talking about massive CHEATING in Philadelphia.”

And yet, posts circulated online claiming otherwise, receiving hundreds of thousands of likes and shares.

“20 MILLION VOTES WERENT COUNTED,” reads one X post. “I KNEW IT TRUMP CHEATED.”

Another X post, which shared a bar graph of presidential election results from 2012-2024, states: “If these nunbers are accurate, this is indicative of a stolen 2020 election. 20 million votes just disappeared. In other words there were potentially 20 million fraudulent votes last cycle. That’s an insane number.” The Democratic candidates in 2012 and 2016 both won nearly 66 million votes, a bit less than Harris’ current count.

Harris had won about 67 million votes as of Wednesday afternoon, compared to the approximately 81 million Biden garnered in 2020 — a difference of about 14 million. But that gap is decreasing as the vote count continues. No state has counted 100% of its ballots yet.

Trump is so far lagging behind his 2020 total by approximately 2 million votes, but this gap is also decreasing as more votes are counted.

Despite persistent claims that Trump won the 2020 election, including from Trump himself, there is no evidence that this is true.

Biden won the Electoral College with 306 votes to Trump’s 232, and the popular vote by more than 7 million ballots. Many battleground states conducted recounts or thorough reviews of their results, all of which confirmed Biden’s victory. An exhaustive 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.

Trump was repeatedly advised by members of his own administration that there was no evidence of widespread fraud. Numerous legal challenges alleging voter fraud pursued by the Trump campaign and its backers were heard and roundly rejected by dozens of courts at the state and federal level, including by judges whom Trump appointed.

The allegations now spreading about fraud in the 2024 race echo many baseless claims that emerged four years ago.

Vice President Kamala Harris called Trump on Wednesday afternoon to concede the race and congratulate him.

“We must respect the results of this election,” she said in her concession speech.