Add another election lie to the long, long list.
Former President Donald Trump has tried for nearly two and a half years to convince Americans that he was the rightful winner of the 2020 presidential election he lost fair and square to Joe Biden. He is still trying today, in 2023, as he seeks the Republican presidential nomination once more.
But Trump’s latest supposed piece of evidence, like his previous supposed pieces of evidence, is complete bunk.
In a speech to a Republican gathering in Florida on Friday, during which he repeated his usual lie that the 2020 election was “rigged and stolen,” Trump pointedly noted that Biden got more votes than Trump in fewer than a fifth of US counties in 2020. Trump then said, “Nothing like this has ever happened before. Usually it’s very equal, or – but the winner always had the most counties.”
Facts First: Trump’s claim that the winner of every presidential election before 2020 always carried the most counties is false. The two previous Democratic winners before Biden, Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 and Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996, carried a minority of counties in each of their victories. Obama won about 28% of counties in his 2008 victory and even fewer, about 22% of counties, in his 2012 victory, according to figures provided to CNN by David Wasserman, a prominent analyst of election data who is a senior editor at The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. Like Biden, Obama won the national popular vote by millions even as he carried fewer than a third of counties.
Biden carried about 17% of counties while beating Trump in 2020, a smaller percentage of counties than Obama carried while winning in 2008 and 2012, but there is nothing odd about the 2020 figure. In fact, it’s easy to explain. Land doesn’t vote, people do. In the current political era, Democratic presidential candidates have tended…
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