The Reluctant Votes That Helped Decide the 2020 Election

“Mainstream politicians, including Biden, represent a disgusting cabal who are only behold to corporations and not people,” said Sam Schrader, a 22-year-old poll worker from Green Bay, Wis. who politically sides with the Party for Socialism and Liberation.  “But I had to vote for the most viable candidate who could defeat Trump, so I voted Biden.” 

In one of the closest elections in United States history, reluctant votes like Schrader’s allowed Democrat Joe Biden to win enough votes for news media to call the 2020 presidential race against standing Republican President Donald Trump this year in his favor.  

The United States is no stranger to close elections. In 2000’s race between George W. Bush and Al Gore, each candidate received the same amount of votes within .5% of one another in Florida, and in 2016’s presidential election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, the candidates both received over 46% of the popular vote. However, what makes this year’s election unique is that it saw the greatest voter turnout in decades. 

Although the exact statistic isn’t available yet, so far, nearly 160 million Americans have voted, according to Time. This number is a drastic increase from the roughly 138 million who voted in 2016’s election, and the 54% of the nation who voted for either Al Gore or George Bush in 2000. 

A percentage of this historic number also came from voters in Wis., where roughly 3 million people voted in this year’s election according to the Wisconsin Elections Committee, compared to the 2.9 million who voted in 2016.

It was because of this drastic increase in turnout for both political parties that individual votes held a great deal of power, even though many of those votes were given for reasons that were sometimes as simple as hating the opposition’s headgear.  

“Honestly, I just don’t want to see any more ‘Make America Great Again’ hats,” said Ben Mulick, a 21-year-old security guard from Milwaukee. “I was also pressured by my family, but it was mainly the hats and the yard signs.”

Individuals’ votes were also important in this year, primarily for the Republican party, because Trump lost support from some of his core voter groups.

According to the Pew Research Center, Trump lost popularity in one of his most favored demographics, white Christians, towards the end of his presidential term. 

The poll that Pew Research Center conducted found that 59% of this demographic initially supported Trump in late July of this year, but in early October that number slipped to 52%. The poll also found Biden gained support from 4% of the responders during the same time period. 

It’s partially because of this change in support that the Associated Press called the election in favor of Biden, who had about 4 million more votes Trump when the election was called.

However, Trump losing some of the support of his base was partially offset by people like 19-year-old Chris Kelly, a student pilot from N.H., who was apathetic about voting for Trump but did so anyway. 

“I hate both candidates equally,” Kelly said. “But I didn’t want to allow myself to be the reason that the alt-Left took power, and I didn’t want to throw my vote away, so I voted Trump.”

Even though Kelly’s vote was ultimately made in vain, he also wasn’t the only person to vote because of a hatred of the other party.

At a rally held on Nov. 4 in Milwaukee, that was organized by a multitude of groups from around the city, had protesters shouting obscenities about Trump while giving the middle finger to one of his campaign offices downtown.  

Although not every protester at the event voted for Biden, the ones that did had a tremendous impact on the outcome of the election. Combined with people like Sam Schrader and Ben Mulick, Biden won in Wis. by about 20,000 votes, a win that helped him become the next president of the United States.