As of November 2, 2020, incumbent Republican President Donald Trump was polling at ** percent in Florida in the race to become the next president of the United States. The 2020 presidential election is set to take place on November 3, 2020.

2020 Florida General Election: Trump vs. Biden | RealClearPolling

As of November 13, 2020, 67 percent of absentee ballots requested in Maryland for the 2020 Presidential Election were requested by Democrats. In Florida, 45 percent of absentee ballots were requested by Democrats.

Maryland has cast electoral ballots in every U.S. presidential election, and has correctly given the majority of its electoral votes to the overall winner in 39 out of 59 elections, resulting in a success rate of 66 percent. Apart from the first two U.S. elections, where George Washington was elected unanimously, Maryland has voted for a major party candidate in all but one elections; this was in 1856, where Maryland was the only state carried by the Know Nothing Party's Millard Fillmore. In early elections, Maryland's electors cast separate ballots for the most popular candidate in their district, although this system fell out of use in the 1830s. Since the 1850s, Maryland has generally voted for the Democratic nominee, siding with the Democrats in 29 elections, and the Republicans twelve times. In the 2020 election, Maryland was a comfortable victory for Democratic nominee Joe Biden, whose share of the popular vote was over double that of his rival, Donald Trump.

Closest ever elections In terms of popular votes, Maryland has seen the two closest results in any presidential election. The first of these was in 1832, where Henry Clay received 19,160 popular votes, while Andrew Jackson received 19,156; a difference of just four votes. The second was in 1904, where Theodore Roosevelt received 109,497 votes, 51 votes more than his rival, Alton B. Parker. In contrast to the 1832 election, the most popular candidate did not win Maryland in 1904, as Democratic politicians and electors were able to manipulate the voting system to change the winner of their district; this system was in place until 1937. While these elections in Maryland have two of the smallest differences in the number of popular votes cast, the smallest difference in the share of votes occurred in the 2000 election in Florida, where George W. Bush defeated Al Gore by just 537 votes, which equated to a 0.009 percent difference.

Marylanders

No U.S. president was ever born in or resided in Maryland when taking office, nor has any major party candidate come from the Old Line State. Throughout most of its history, Maryland was allocated eight electoral votes, although it was raised to ten in the second half of the twentieth century, due to a high growth rate in the decades after the Second World War.

Although it is not a requirement, the concession speech of the losing candidate has become a customary element of each U.S. presidential election. It is seen as a sign of acceptance by the losing candidate, and signals the peaceful transfer of power in cases where the incumbent president has lost re-election. As a courtesy, the winning candidate usually waits for the loser to make their concession speech before claiming victory. In the majority of cases, the concession came on either election day or the day following the election (often in the early hours of the morning); although in 2000 it took 36 days for the loser to concede. Yet, these customs have not been adhered to in recent elections, where the fallout from the 2020 election saw Donald Trump become the first major party candidate to not concede defeat in over ninety years, whereas in 2024, Trump publicly claimed victory before Kamala Harris' concession call. Concession methods change with the times In 1896, William Jennings Bryan began the tradition of publicly conceding the election by sending a courtesy telegram to his opponent, William McKinley. From 1896 until 1972, losing candidates generally sent a private concession telegram to their opponent, before the telegram was replaced by a customary phone call in 1976. In addition to these personal messages, televised speeches also became the norm from 1952 onwards, when Adlai Stevenson conceded to Dwight D. Eisenhower. Between 1928 and 1948, some candidates also conceded via a radio address (Thomas E. Dewey did so without privately conceding in 1944), while Wendell Wilkie's concession speech in 1940 was publicly broadcast in movie theaters. 2000 controversy On election day in 2000, the early results were signaling a victory for George W. Bush, and Al Gore called his opponent and privately conceded the election; however, before Gore could concede publicly, later counts brought the nationwide results closer and he withdrew his concession. Eventually, the electoral college result was to be decided in Florida, where Bush was leading, yet the count was so close that it triggered an automatic recount. Following a month-long process of recounts and court cases, it was declared that Bush won Florida by a margin of just 537 votes with almost six million votes cast. Al Gore officially conceded 36 days after election day. 2020 controversy In contrast to 2000, in the 2020 election, Joe Biden received over seven million more popular votes than his opponent (no individual state was won by a margin of fewer than 10,000 votes), and secured 306 electoral votes, which were cast at each state's meeting of electors in December without irregularities. Despite all of this, President Trump spent the remainder of his term claiming victory, and that the election had been stolen through widespread voter and election fraud. Neither the President nor his legal team provided any evidence of these claims, and all appeals to overturn the results were rejected by the courts. On January 6, Congress convened to certify the election results; at the same time, Trump gave a speech encouraging his supporters to march upon the Capitol building, which led to them storming and vandalizing the building. Five people died in connection with this. After the rioters were dispersed, Congress reconvened and certified the results. The following week, Trump was impeached for the second time. Joe Biden became President on January 20th, while Donald Trump left office without publicly accepting the results of the 2020 election.

The Twenty-third Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted citizens of the District of Columbia the right to vote in U.S. presidential elections; since this came into effect in 1964, the nation's capital has voted for the Democratic Party's nominee in every election, making this the longest ongoing streak in U.S. presidential elections. The record for the longest ever streak in the history of U.S. presidential elections belongs to Vermont (Republican) and Georgia (Democrat), who each voted for the same party's candidate in 27 consecutive elections between 1852 and 1960. The south and west prove loyal There are nine states, mostly across the West and Midwest, that have voted for the Republican candidate in all U.S. presidential elections since Richard Nixon's first victory in 1968. A number of other Republican streaks began in the south with Ronald Reagan's landslide victory in 1980, after briefly turning Democrat for Georgia's Jimmy Carter in 1976; historically the south had been a Democratic stronghold for more than a century, however the Republican Party's "Southern strategy" in the 1960s established them as the dominant party in the region during the civil rights era. Along with the District of Columbia, the only state not won by Reagan in 1984 was Minnesota, as Walter Mondale carried his home state by a very narrow margin. Minnesota's streak is the second-longest for the Democratic Party, while most of the other ongoing Democratic streaks began in either 1988 or 1992.

Recent swing states In the 2016 election, there were six states (with 99 electoral votes combined) that had been won by Barack Obama in 2012, but turned red in 2016. In the 2020 election, Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, managed to win back three of these states, as well as ending a six election Republican streak in Georgia and a five election streak in Arizona. In contrast, Donald Trump failed to flip any further Democratic strongholds, but repeated his victories in Florida, Iowa and Ohio. Going into this election, pollsters had predicted that the races in both Texas and Florida would be tight, with a combined total of 67 electoral votes, however the incumbent president won the popular votes in these states with margins of roughly six and 3.5 percent respectively.

When compared to the 2016 presidential election, requests for absentee ballots in Florida for the 2020 presidential election increased by *** percent. The largest increase in absentee ballot requests (when compared to 2016 levels) occurred in Pennsylvania, with a ***** percent increase.

In the 2024 presidential election, Republicans received a larger share of votes in every U.S. state compared with 2020, flipping *** states in the process. New York saw the greatest increase in Republican votes, reporting **** percent more votes cast for Donald Trump in 2024 than in 2020. Additionally, the share of Republican votes in New Jersey and Florida increased by almost **** percent.