What Happened in 2020

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won in 2020 with a multiracial coalition, and 2020 was the most diverse electorate ever. Latino voters continued to favor Democrats, but Republicans made inroads with Latino voters. Black voter turnout increased substantially, resulting in significant gains for democrats, despite a modest overall drop in Democratic support levels. The urban-rural voting divide continues to be immensely important, with suburbs growing more Democratic and racially diverse. Young voters drove record-breaking turnout. This long report includes many data analyses and visuals to describe voting patterns in the 2020 election.

This analysis offers a view from the perspective of the Catalist database, which includes 15 years of voter registration records, supplemented by large-scale polling, modeling and precinct-level geographic analysis. Since 2018, Catalist has produced a series of “What Happened” reports to publicly share relevant findings from its research. Understanding the contours of this election, and how it compares to recent elections, is critical to understanding the state of our democracy. At the same time, getting an accurate picture is a challenge. Various data sources exist, but they sometimes give vastly different answers to the same questions.