The 2020 US election set a new record for spending, with nearly $14 billion spent, double the amount spent in 2016. Democrats spent nearly twice as much as Republicans, with spending split evenly between the presidential campaign and congressional vote. Joe Biden raised over $1 billion, while Donald Trump raised just over $950 million. The election saw a record 160 million voters, with two-thirds voting by mail due to the pandemic. Biden won the popular vote by 7.1 million, but Trump was close to a tie in the Electoral College.
The 2020 US election was memorable for many reasons, not the least of which was the huge toll it brought. The most recent election cycle broke all records, with total spending reaching nearly $14 billion, more than double the amount spent in the election held just four years earlier.
Spending in 2020 was split nearly evenly between the presidential campaign ($6.6 billion) and the congressional vote ($7 billion). According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Democrats have spent nearly twice as much as their Republican rivals.
For comparison, presidential candidates spent just over $2 billion in both 2016 and 2012, while congressional candidates handed out about $4 billion in each of these elections. Before winning the presidential race, Joe Biden reportedly became the first candidate in history to raise $1 billion, while his opponent, then-President Donald Trump, raised just over $950 million.
Read more about the 2020 election:
Nearly 160 million people voted in the 2020 presidential election, setting a record in the United States.
The coronavirus pandemic has prompted a huge amount of mail-in voting, with two-thirds of all voting taking place before Election Day.
Although Biden won the popular vote by 7.1 million votes, Trump was less than 43,000 votes short of a tie in the Electoral College, due to narrow margins in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin.
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