Fact Check: Addressing Claims That Joe Biden’s Vote Total Is Suspicious

Trump supporters have suggested it's unlikely or impossible that the Democratic nominee got 80 million votes.

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A widely shared Instagram post is circulating a tweet from Eric Trump that questions the validity of President-elect Joe Biden’s vote total.

Biden received more than 80 million votes in the 2020 presidential election, surpassing Barack Obama’s 2008 popular vote record of 69,498,516 votes. In 2012, Obama received 62,611, 250 votes. 

There are several explanations as to why Biden could have gotten more votes than Obama in 2012, including high turnout, voter enthusiasm, and population growth. 

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  1. rob

    Voter turn out was especially high, because in light of the coronavirus "voters" did not have to prove the were actually human beings by showing up at the polls. Trucks filled with "mail in" votes pulled up in the middle of the night without ever having the photo id of the "voter" being verified. And without any chain of custody between when the voter cast the ballot and when it was counted there is no way of knowing that the votes were not tampered with. This is the first time that an incumbent got 13 million more votes then he did the year before and won the number of votes cast on Election Day 4/1 and lost.
    This is probably why so many people think that the vote total seem so suspicious.

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    Scarlette Tarte

    Yes Erick, blame your DAD for that. Love him or hate him, TRUMP drives people to the polls.

    And more people hate your dad than love him, thank heavens.

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    Pierre Bezukhov

    Eric is channeling Uday Hussein. Eric Trump's logical fallacy (or dysfunctional thinking) falls under the category of ... get this ... *anecdotal*. Because his dad campaigned so much harder than Joe, as he sees it, only election fraud would explain his dad losing. You could point out to him that Joe got more votes than his dad and that his dad's Attorney General along with the likes of Andy McCarthy see nothing fishy going on that would impact the election, but it would be like explaining it to your cat.

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      Pierre Bezukhov

      My point is that this statement alone by Eric Trump should disqualify him as credible. Only a fool would say this. I would know!

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    Old guy named Bill (OGNB)

    Thanks for your fact check and logic-focused explanation! I appreciate all of your fact checks.

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  5. sane_AZ

    I appreciate the fact checks on the election items. In the future, I would love to see some reality checks of the claims of how various Democrat initiatives would be paid for by soaking the super rich. Do the numbers add up at all?

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  6. tla

    Yes, the real question should be how did Trump get more votes than Obama. Highly suspicious!

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  7. Bob Simrak

    Trump is the reason turnout was so high. As the most polarizing candidate of the century he not only recruited for his own base, he actually campaigned for his opposition. All Biden needed to do was let Trump speak. Trump did Biden's heavy lifting for him. The hardest thing Biden had to do was keep his mouth shut.

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      JDW

      ding ding ding. We have a winner. This is the truth of it. Trump campaigned for both Biden and himself everywhere he went.

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        Pierre Bezukhov

        I've heard rumors to that effect, as well. But I wouldn't necessarily describe Trump as "polarizing" per se. Wait ... I just did a search on what that word means, and so I guess I would.

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      Tom B.

      Quite a while ago (I honestly forget exactly when, but I think before COVID), Jonah Goldberg suggested that Joe Biden run a front porch campaign, and let Trump destroy himself. Joe Biden, who first became aware of Jonah's genius during his internship with Ben Wattenberg at AEI, listened carefully.* The results speak for themselves.

      --
      * I should be clear that this particular sentence is pure fantasy.

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      BrandonAlleman

      I agree about the Trump turn out but also think the expanded voting options provoked by covid made it easier for more people to participate, increased turn out, and was a positive development.

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      1. Erin

        Good point!
        I'd love it if we could keep the easier access to early and mail-in voting even after the pandemic.

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  8. Raincheck

    Don’t forget that voters had nothing better to do during the pandemic, so they voted.😁😁😁

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    Lindy

    One of my first thoughts when I saw the responses to Eric Trump's tweet was how could that guy feel able to speak for all 80 million Biden voters? The second was, why did he muddy the waters with his second response. It was totally not to the point, and nothing more than a personal attack. Made him feel good probably, turned me off. That said, yes, I believe Biden got 80 million votes. That's because I DON'T feel there was a vast conspiracy on both the right and the left to lie, and there were plenty of stories leading up to the election about the huge amount of early/mail in voting, and plenty of stories election day about the turnout on election day. So, while there is no available evidence of a massive conspiracy, there IS evidence of a massive amount of votes.

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    Jesse Blankenship

    In today's Morning Jolt Jim Geraghty referred to friends , or former friends, or former colleagues who swallow this conspiracy claptrap as being turned into pod people. Thank you fact checkers for giving us ready ammo to try and dislodge those same in our own lives from this particularly cruel ramification of being a Trumpanista.

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