Behind the deeply contentious 2020 election stands a real story of a broken election process. Election fraud that alters election outcomes and dilutes legitimate votes occurs all too often, as is the bungling of election bureaucrats. Our election process is full of vulnerabilities that can be — and are — taken advantage of, raising questions about, and damaging public confidence in, the legitimacy of the outcome of elections. This book explores the reality of the fraud and bureaucratic errors and mistakes that should concern all Americans and offers recommendations and solutions to fix those problems.
The 2020 presidential election was one of the most historic, contested, and contentious in American history. Joe Biden was the oldest person elected president. Kamala Harris was the first female elected vice president and the first vice president of Black and Asian descent. The primaries, campaigns, and elections were held for the first time amid an international and national pandemic. Despite this, voter turnout was the highest in 120 years. Donald Trump was the first president in modern times who refused to concede, leading to numerous lawsuits over the election process and results, although election litigation and state officials found no evidence of large-scale voter fraud. Nevertheless, continued claims of a stolen election led to a riotous mob occupation of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an attempt to overturn the Electoral College results. The Atlas of the 2020 Elections explains the results of the 2020 elections with a series of unique maps unleashing the illustrative power of cartography and the relevance of history and political geography. The contributors—a balanced mix of geographers, political scientists, and historians—provide a comprehensive examination of the election process from the primary campaigns through the general election and post-election events. In addition to the presidential election, the Atlas has full coverage of other important races, including congressional races, state races, and local and state referenda. Illustrated with more than 150 meticulously drawn full-color maps and numerous graphs and tables, the Atlas will be an essential reference and a fascinating resource for scholars, teachers, students, pundits, campaign staff, and political junkies alike, and for all who care about the American democratic process.
The 2020 Presidential Election in the South details how the 2020 presidential election developed in the twelve states of the South. This edited volume features preeminent scholars of Southern politics who analyze the momentous Election of 2020. In addition to chapters organized by state, this volume also focuses upon the issues that drove southern voters, the nominations process in early 2020, as well as a chapter focusing on where the region may be headed politically in the next decade. In addition, each state chapter includes analysis on notable congressional races and important patterns at the state level. The authors also provide keen insight into the ever-changing political patterns in the region. Since the South continues to evolve in terms of politics and demographic shifts, this book will be an important tool for academics. However, the book will also enlighten journalists and political enthusiasts seeking a deeper understanding of contemporary changes in Southern electoral politics.
FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER JUSTICE ON TRIAL Stunned by the turbulence of the 2020 election, millions of Americans are asking the forbidden question: what really happened? It was a devastating triple punch. Capping their four-year campaign to destroy the Trump presidency, the media portrayed a Democratic victory as necessary and inevitable. Big Tech, wielding unprecedented powers, vaporized dissent and erased damning reports about the Biden family's corruption. And Democratic operatives, exploiting a public health crisis, shamelessly manipulated the voting process itself. Silenced and subjected, the American people lost their faith in the system. RIGGED is the definitive account of the 2020 election. Based on Mollie Hemingway's exclusive interviews with campaign officials, reporters, Supreme Court justices, and President Trump himself, it exposes the fraud and cynicism behind the Democrats' historic power-grab. Rewriting history is a specialty of the radical left, now in control of America's political and cultural heights. But they will have to contend with the determination, insight, and eloquence of Mollie Hemingway. RIGGED is a reminder for weary patriots that truth is still the most powerful weapon. The stakes for our democracy have never been higher.
What an intensely divisive election portends for American politics The year 2020 was a tumultuous time in American politics. It brought a global pandemic, protests for racial justice, and a razor-thin presidential election outcome. It culminated in an attack on the U.S. Capitol that attempted to deny Joe Biden’s victory. The Bitter End explores the long-term trends and short-term shocks that shaped this dramatic year and what these changes could mean for the future. John Sides, Chris Tausanovitch, and Lynn Vavreck demonstrate that Trump’s presidency intensified the partisan politics of the previous decades and the identity politics of the 2016 election. Presidential elections have become calcified, with less chance of big swings in either party’s favor. Republicans remained loyal to Trump and kept the election close, despite Trump’s many scandals, a recession, and the pandemic. But in a narrowly divided electorate even small changes can have big consequences. The pandemic was a case in point: when Trump pushed to reopen the country even as infections mounted, support for Biden increased. The authors explain that, paradoxically, even as Biden’s win came at a time of heightened party loyalty, there remained room for shifts that shaped the election’s outcome. Ultimately, the events of 2020 showed that instead of the country coming together to face national challenges—the pandemic, George Floyd’s murder, and the Capitol riot—these challenges only reinforced divisions. Expertly chronicling the tensions of an election that came to an explosive finish, The Bitter End presents a detailed account of a year of crises and the dangerous direction in which the country is headed.
Is America in the midst of an electoral transformation? What were the sources of victory in 2020, and how do they differ from Republican and Democratic coalitions of the past? Does the Democratic victory signal a long-term decline for Republicans’ chances in presidential elections? Change and Continuity in the 2020 Elections attempts to answer those questions by analyzing and explaining the voting behavior in the most recent election, as well as setting the results in the context of larger trends and patterns in elections studies. This top-notch author team meticulously explains the latest National Election Studies data and discuss its importance and impact. Readers will critically analyze a variety of variables such as the presidential and congressional elections, voter turnout, and the social forces, party loyalties, and prominent issues that affect voting behavior. Readers will walk away with a better understanding of this groundbreaking election and what those results mean for the future of American politics.
Originally published in 2000, The Right to Vote was widely hailed as a magisterial account of the evolution of suffrage from the American Revolution to the end of the twentieth century. In this revised and updated edition, Keyssar carries the story forward, from the disputed presidential contest of 2000 through the 2008 campaign and the election of Barack Obama. The Right to Vote is a sweeping reinterpretation of American political history as well as a meditation on the meaning of democracy in contemporary American life.
Through pandemic, protests, and polarization, Americans went to the polls in 2020, one of the most contentious elections in American history. Continuing an R&L tradition now entering its fourth decade, Divided We Stand book provides the most comprehensive and authoritative account of the national election, as well as congressional and state elections. From the nominating process to the insurrection designed to stop the ratification of the electoral college vote, Andrew E. Busch and John J. Pitney Jr. revisit the campaigns and results through the short lens of politics today and the long lens of American political history. With its keen insights into the issues and events that drove the 2020 elections, Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics will be an invaluable resource for students and all political observers seeking to understand a historic election that will continue to resonate throughout American politics for many years to come.
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! Michael C. Bender, senior White House reporter for the Wall Street Journal, presents a deeply reported account of the 2020 presidential campaign that details how Donald J. Trump became the first incumbent in three decades to lose reelection—and the only one whose defeat culminated in a violent insurrection. Beginning with President Trump’s first impeachment and ending with his second, FRANKLY, WE DID WIN THIS ELECTION chronicles the inside-the-room deliberations between Trump and his campaign team as they opened 2020 with a sleek political operation built to harness a surge of momentum from a bullish economy, a unified Republican Party, and a string of domestic and foreign policy successes—only to watch everything unravel when fortunes suddenly turned. With first-rate sourcing cultivated from five years of covering Trump in the White House and both of his campaigns, Bender brings readers inside the Oval Office, aboard Air Force One, and into the front row of the movement’s signature mega-rallies for the story of an epic election-year convergence of COVID, economic collapse, and civil rights upheaval—and an unorthodox president’s attempt to battle it all. Fresh interviews with Trump, key campaign advisers, and senior administration officials are paired with an exclusive collection of internal campaign memos, emails, and text messages for scores of never-before-reported details about the campaign. FRANKLY, WE DID WIN THIS ELECTION is the inside story of how Trump lost, and the definitive account of his final year in office that draws a straight line from the president’s repeated insistence that he would never lose to the deadly storming of the U.S. Capitol that imperiled one of his most loyal lieutenants—his own vice president.
A New Statesman Book of the Year “America’s greatest historian of democracy now offers an extraordinary history of the most bizarre aspect of our representative democracy—the electoral college...A brilliant contribution to a critical current debate.” —Lawrence Lessig, author of They Don’t Represent Us Every four years, millions of Americans wonder why they choose their presidents through an arcane institution that permits the loser of the popular vote to become president and narrows campaigns to swing states. Congress has tried on many occasions to alter or scuttle the Electoral College, and in this master class in American political history, a renowned Harvard professor explains its confounding persistence. After tracing the tangled origins of the Electoral College back to the Constitutional Convention, Alexander Keyssar outlines the constant stream of efforts since then to abolish or reform it. Why have they all failed? The complexity of the design and partisan one-upmanship have a lot to do with it, as do the difficulty of passing constitutional amendments and the South’s long history of restrictive voting laws. By revealing the reasons for past failures and showing how close we’ve come to abolishing the Electoral College, Keyssar offers encouragement to those hoping for change. “Conclusively demonstrates the absurdity of preserving an institution that has been so contentious throughout U.S. history and has not infrequently produced results that defied the popular will.” —Michael Kazin, The Nation “Rigorous and highly readable...shows how the electoral college has endured despite being reviled by statesmen from James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson to Edward Kennedy, Bob Dole, and Gerald Ford.” —Lawrence Douglas, Times Literary Supplement
