Unlike in 2020, the loser of the presidential election in 2024 has conceded the race and made no claims of voter fraud. Kamala Harris acknowledged Donald Trump’s victory the day after Election Day.
But some supporters of both Harris and Trump have still made claims about election fraud.
Specifically, there have been several posts claiming the vote totals are suspicious. They say that in 2020 Joe Biden got more than 80 million votes, but in 2024 Harris somehow only received around 65 million.
Some of these posts suggest these figures show that Republicans rigged the 2024 election, while others suggest they show Democrats rigged the 2020 election.
THE QUESTION
Did Kamala Harris receive 15 million fewer votes in 2024 than Joe Biden did in 2020?
THE SOURCES
- Associated Press
- Election Lab, University of Florida
- Cook Political Report
- American Presidency Project, UC Santa Barbara
THE ANSWER
No, Harris did not get 15 million fewer votes than Biden.
WHAT WE FOUND
The posts claiming vote totals show election irregularities or fraud are based on old data that does not reflect the actual current vote totals. These posts were largely made and circulated in the immediate aftermath of the election, when Trump had just been declared the winner but tens of millions of ballots were still left to count.
The latest vote tally as of Nov. 25 has Harris with 74,341,049 votes and Donald Trump with 76,842,134 votes. Trump currently is carrying roughly 50 percent of the popular vote to Harris’s 48 percent.
The final vote count in 2020 was 81,268,773 for Biden and 74,216,728 for Trump.
That means Harris received roughly seven million fewer votes than Biden won in 2020. So what accounts for the difference?
For one, data so far suggests turnout rate is down slightly. According to the University of Florida Election Lab, 66.38 percent of eligible voters submitted a ballot in 2020 while preliminary data estimates 63.68 percent have this year. That’s still the second-highest turnout rate for a presidential election this century, but 2020 was higher in part because of the widespread use of mail-in voting during the pandemic.
Secondly, Harris is simply less popular in 2024 than Biden was in 2020. Many people who voted for Biden in 2020 may have voted for Trump in 2024 or not voted for president at all.
And third, there are still votes left to count. States have until Dec. 11 to finalize and certify their results.
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