The specter of the 2020 election has returned this week after Fox News settled with Dominion Voting Systems over a lawsuit alleging that the network made false claims about the company's voting machines.
The lawsuit, which alleged that anchors on Fox News promoted former President Donald Trump's claims that the election was stolen and that ballots cast through Dominion Voting Systems were "flipped" from Trump to Biden, was settled at a cost of $787.5 million to the broadcaster.
However, according to one social media post this week, it seems such high drama was unwarranted, with basic arithmetic suggesting that Trump won the majority of available votes.
The Claim
A tweet by user @itspatsworld, posted on April 18, 2023, viewed 159,000 times, said: "Donald Trump got 74 million votes. There are 133 million registered voters in the USA.
"If every single registered voter went out and voted, there would only be 59 million votes left for Biden."
"How did Biden get 81 million votes??"
The Facts
Trump told supporters this week that his presidential campaign would be launching its own "BALLOT HARVESTING FUND" in states where Democrats had allegedly been "cheating the system."
The former president continues to make claims about the results of the 2020 election, as he approaches the 2024 presidential race.
The numbers that were shared by @itspatsworld on Twitter this week will do nothing to help vindicate Trump's sense of injustice.
There were 158,383,403 votes during the 2020 election, of which Joe Biden received 81.2 million, with Trump trailing at 74.2 million, according to the Federal Election Commission.
Where the claim originated that there were only 133 million voters is unclear. According to Statista, voter registration has not been that low since 2000.
It's possible that the figure was revived from a December 2020 claim, made shortly after the election, that Biden received phantom votes. The premise of the claim said that "there are only 133 million registered voters in the USA."
Even at the time, estimates suggested that there had been "159 million ballots cast" (not far from the eventual final figure), a fact check by USA Today said.
However it was imagined, the claim made by @itspatsworld is wrong.
While false claims of the 2020 election continue to swirl online among Trump's supporters, the former president has more recently turned to Republican opponent Ron DeSantis for a new battle of numbers.
In November 2022, Trump correctly said that he received 1.1 million more votes in Florida during the last presidential election than DeSantis received in the 2022 midterms.
"Now that the Election in Florida is over, and everything went quite well, shouldn't it be said that in 2020, I got 1.1 Million more votes in Florida than Ron D got this year, 5.7 Million to 4.6 Million? Just asking?" Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The Ruling
False.
The claim that there were 133 million voters is wrong. It appears to be based on a figure shared just after the 2020 election that was debunked years ago.
Data from the Federal Election Commission shows that 158,303,403 votes were cast in the 2020 presidential election. Joe Biden won with 81.2 million votes to Trump's 74.2 million.
FACT CHECK BY Newsweek's Fact Check team
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
