PROBLEM AND OPPORTUNITY In the United States, voting is largely a private matter. A registered voter is given a randomized ballot form or machine to prevent linkage between their voting choices and their identity. This disconnect supports confidence in the election process, but it provides obstacles to an election's analysis. A common solution is to field exit polls, interviewing voters immediately after leaving their polling location. This method is rife with bias, however, and functionally limited in direct demographics data collected. For the 2020 general election, though, most states published their election results for each voting location. These publications were additionally supported by the geographical areas assigned to each location, the voting precincts. As a result, geographic processing can now be applied to project precinct election results onto Census block groups. While precinct have few demographic traits directly, their geographies have characteristics that make them projectable onto U.S. Census geographies. Both state voting precincts and U.S. Census block groups: are exclusive, and do not overlap are adjacent, fully covering their corresponding state and potentially county have roughly the same size in area, population and voter presence Analytically, a projection of local demographics does not allow conclusions about voters themselves. However, the dataset does allow statements related to the geographies that yield voting behavior. One could say, for example, that an area dominated by a particular voting pattern would have mean traits of age, race, income or household structure. The dataset that results from this programming provides voting results allocated by Census block groups. The block group identifier can be joined to Census Decennial and American Community Survey demographic estimates. DATA SOURCES The state election results and geographies have been compiled by Voting and Election Science team on Harvard's dataverse. State voting precincts lie within state and county boundaries. The Census Bureau, on the other hand, publishes its estimates across a variety of geographic definitions including a hierarchy of states, counties, census tracts and block groups. Their definitions can be found here. The geometric shapefiles for each block group are available here. The lowest level of this geography changes often and can obsolesce before the next census survey (Decennial or American Community Survey programs). The second to lowest census level, block groups, have the benefit of both granularity and stability however. The 2020 Decennial survey details US demographics into 217,740 block groups with between a few hundred and a few thousand people. Dataset Structure The dataset's columns include: Column Definition BLOCKGROUP_GEOID 12 digit primary key. Census GEOID of the block group row. This code concatenates: 2 digit state 3 digit county within state 6 digit Census Tract identifier 1 digit Census Block Group identifier within tract STATE State abbreviation, redundent with 2 digit state FIPS code above REP Votes for Republican party candidate for president DEM Votes for Democratic party candidate for president LIB Votes for Libertarian party candidate for president OTH Votes for presidential candidates other than Republican, Democratic or Libertarian AREA square kilometers of area associated with this block group GAP total area of the block group, net of area attributed to voting precincts PRECINCTS Number of voting precincts that intersect this block group ASSUMPTIONS, NOTES AND CONCERNS: Votes are attributed based upon the proportion of the precinct's area that intersects the corresponding block group. Alternative methods are left to the analyst's initiative. 50 states and the District of Columbia are in scope as those U.S. possessions voting in the general election for the U.S. Presidency. Three states did not report their results at the precinct level: South Dakota, Kentucky and West Virginia. A dummy block group is added for each of these states to maintain national totals. These states represent 2.1% of all votes cast. Counties are commonly coded using FIPS codes. However, each election result file may have the county field named differently. Also, three states do not share county definitions - Delaware, Massachusetts, Alaska and the District of Columbia. Block groups may be used to capture geographies that do not have population like bodies of water. As a result, block groups without intersection voting precincts are not uncommon. In the U.S., elections are administered at a state level with the Federal Elections Commission compiling state totals against the Electoral College weights. The states have liberty, though, to define and change their own voting precincts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_precinct. The Census Bureau practices "data suppression", filtering some block groups from demographic publication because they do not meet a population threshold. This practice is done to maintain statistical reliability in the estimates and to prevent accidental disclosure of individual respondents. As a result, the shape files for state block groups may have additional block groups not available in demographic estimates. ignoring the suppressed block groups will cause statistical bias for these smallest geographies As written, this projection takes more than 6 days to complete on a familiar Intel-64 based laptop. Its performance would benefit from: Running states in parallel rather than serially Looking for intersecting precincts within the shared county rather than state level Allocation details causes challenges in efforts to tie totals to state and national summaries. By allocating each of 233,866 detailed block groups based on area, many double precision proportions area applied to original integer counts. The allocations themselves then are not integers and may not sum exactly to the reported state election counts. RECOGNITION Special thanks to the meticulous efforts of: The Voting and Election Science Team (University of Florida, Wichita State University) (https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/electionscience) @data{DVN/K7760H_2020, author = {Voting and Election Science Team}, publisher = {Harvard Dataverse}, title = {{2020 Precinct-Level Election Results}}, year = {2020}, version = {V29}, doi = {10.7910/DVN/K7760H}, url = {https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/K7760H} } MIT's Election Data and Science Lab MEDSL (https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/medsl “U.S. Census TIGER/Line Files for Block Groups 2021.” Index of /Geo/Tiger/TIGER2021/BG, 22 Sept. 2021, https://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2021/BG/. LICENSE This code is available subject to the MIT Open Source License SUMMARY STATISTICS State Republican Democrat Libertarian Other Precincts Block Groups AL 1,441,170 849,624 25,176 7,312 1,972 3,925 AK 189,951 153,778 8,897 4,943 441 504 AZ 1,661,686 1,672,143 51,465 0 1,489 4,773 AR 760,647 423,932 13,133 21,357 2,591 2,294 CA 6,006,428 11,110,493 187,907 192,232 20,799 25,607 CO 1,364,607 1,804,352 52,460 35,561 3,215 4,058 CT 714,717 1,080,831 20,230 8,079 741 2,716 DE 200,603 296,268 5,000 2,139 434 706 DC 18,586 317,323 2,036 6,411 144 571 FL 5,668,731 5,297,045 70,324 54,769 6,010 13,388 GA 2,461,837 2,474,507 62,138 0 2,679 7,446 HI 196,864 366,130 5,539 5,936 262 1,083 ID 554,119 287,021 16,404 9,737 935 1,284 IL 2,446,891 3,471,915 66,544 48,088 10,083 9,898 IN 1,729,857 1,242,498 58,901 0 5,166 5,290 IA 897,672 759,061 19,637 14,501 1,661 2,703 KS 771,406 570,323 30,574 0 4,070 2,461 LA 1,255,776 856,034 21,645 14,607 3,753 4,294 ME 360,767 435,070 14,120 9,412 573 1,184 MD 976,414 1,985,023 33,488 42,106 2,043 4,079 MA 1,167,202 2,382,202 47,013 34,985 2,173 5,116 MI 2,649,859 2,804,036 60,406 23,907 4,756 8,386 MN 1,484,065 1,717,077 34,976 41,053 4,110 4,706 MS 756,764 539,398 8,026 9,571 1,764 2,445 MO 1,718,736 1,253,014 41,205 12,202 3,733 5,031 MT 343,602 244,786 15,252 0 666 900 NE 556,846 374,583 20,283 0 1,386 1,648 NV 669,890 703,486 14,783 17,217 2,094 1,963 NH 365,660 424,937 13,236 0 321 997 NJ 1,883,274 2,608,335 31,677 26,067 726 6,599 NM 401,894 501,614 12,585 7,872 1,917 1,614 NY 3,251,997 5,244,886 60,383 74,987 15,376 16,070 NC 2,758,775 2,684,292 48,678 33,059 2,662 7,111 ND 235,751 115,042 9,371 1,860 422 632 OH 3,154,834 2,679,165 67,569 18,812 8,941 9,472 OK 1,020,280 503,890 24,731 11,798 1,948 3,374 OR 958,448 1,340,383 41,582 33,908 1,331 2,970 PA 3,378,442 3,460,475 79,432 0 9,150 10,173 RI 199,922 307,486 5,053 5,296 423 792 SC 1,385,103 1,091,541 27,916 8,769 2,263 3,408 TN 1,852,475 1,143,711 29,877 26,926 1,962 4,562 TX 5,890,570 5,259,281 126,269 44,299 9,014 18,638 UT 865,140 560,282 38,447 42,773 2,424 2,020 VT 112,704 242,820 3,608 8,296 284 552 VA 1,962,430 2,413,568 64,761 19,765 2,477 5,963 WA 1,584,651 2,369,612 80,500 52,868 7,464 5,311 WI 1,610,184 1,630,866 38,491 18,500 7,090 4,692 WY 193,559 73,491 5,768 3,947 481 457 Total 72,091,786 80,127,630 1,817,496 1,055,927.00 166,419 233,866

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.

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, while the fallout from the most recent election saw Donald Trump become the first major party candidate to not concede defeat in over ninety years . Methods 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 and 2020 controversies 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 by Florida, where Bush was leading, however 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 just 537 votes, and Al Gore officially conceded 36 days after election day.

In contrast to 2000, 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 most of his final ten weeks in office claiming victory, and that the election had been stolen due to widespread voter and election fraud. Neither the president nor his legal team provided any evidence of these claims, and all appeals to overturn 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.

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.