Some conservative conspiracists have landed on yet another head-scratching theory about the 2020 election after Donald Trump cruised to victory on Tuesday.
Now, a contingent of right-wingers claim, they finally have proof that backs up their years-long insistence the last presidential election was stolen from Trump by Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.
Their only evidence, it seems: Trump’s victory was just too significant—and turnout numbers too low—this time around for him to have realistically lost in 2020. Jason Fyk, a conservative personality on X who boasts 33,000 followers, was among those pushing the unfounded claim.
ADVERTISEMENT
“If these nunbers (sic) are accurate, this is indicative of a stolen 2020 election,” Fyk posted to X along with a graphic depicting voter turnout. “20 million votes just disappeared. In other words there were potentially 20 million fraudulent votes last cycle. That’s an insane number.”
There remains no evidence of widespread voter fraud in 2020 and Fyk’s claim that votes “just disappeared” this cycle is misleading. There is still a large gap in vote totals from 2020 to this election in part because there’s millions of ballots that, as of early Wednesday afternoon, still need to be counted in states like California. A simple dip in voter turnout among Democrats has also been blamed.
Those facts haven’t stopped conservatives from pushing the conspiracy, however, or at least alluding to it.
“Weird how +20 million Democrats just disappeared in a single election from 2020 to 2024,” posted the conservative commentator Benny Johnson. “Super duper strange man. Joe Biden got 81 million votes. Kamala got 60? Very Sus.”
The top comment under Johnson’s post, which pulled in a staggering 21,000 likes, read, “Trump is the first ever President to win 3 elections.”
As of 2 p.m. Wednesday, Harris had a little over 67 million votes tabulated for her and Trump had a little under 72 million. Combined, that still-incomplete total adds up to about 139 million votes—16 million less than the 155.5 ballots that were counted in 2020.
Marc Clair, a former podcaster with 11K followers on X, was among the right-wingers who shared a graph that highlighted the steep fall-off in voter turnout.
“To accept 2020 as legitimate,” he said, “we have to believe an extra 20 million showed up out of nowhere and voted in 2020 for Biden and four years later collectively said ‘nah, we’re good.’”
Kevin Bass, a conservative writer and data scientist who boasts 141K followers on X, also chimed in on the matter. He wrote, “20 million votes just appeared in 2020. Then, just as soon, they disappeared again. Why?”
Conservatives aren’t the only ones running with conspiracies based off a dip in turnout numbers. A handful of Democrats have also pointed to the number of “missing” votes as reason for Harris to not immediately concede defeat—something she plans to do on Wednesday afternoon—until a concrete reason for the plunge in turnout emerges.
The Daily Beast Podcast episodes are released every Thursday. Like and download on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. And click here for email updates as each new episode drops.
