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November 8, 2022

On November 3, 2020, as election night rolled into election morning, Jill and Joseph Biden walked out alone on stage to stand before a crowd of brand-new Jeeps. “We feel good about where we are. We really do,” Joe Biden said to the occasional honk from the vehicles.

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It was an odd scene on an odd election night—with Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania determined too close to call.

Just as oddsmakers and media pundits began tipping their hand—that somehow Trump had managed to pull it off again—network broadcasts announced, almost in unison, that states were largely done counting for the evening. They would need more time.

Jill Biden, wearing a cloth mask and occasionally clapping, stood next to her husband as he reassured the audience that, although this election night was unprecedented, things were all going exactly as they planned.

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“I’m here to tell you tonight we believe we are on track to win this election. We knew because the unprecedented early vote and mail-in vote it was going to take a while,” he said. “We were going to have to be patient. It ain’t over till every vote is counted.”

In the end, when every vote was counted, five of the six states would award their electoral votes to now President Biden.

From the early and mail-in voting to which Biden referred to the now famous election night “pause” that is not a pause depending on whom you ask, much of the 2020 election was indeed extremely rare or unprecedented. Battleground states Florida and Ohio went to Trump—a two-state parlay winner that forecasted the Presidential Election successfully in every election since 1960.

So-called “bellwether counties,” counties that typically predict the winner, sided with trump 18 out of 19 times. Before 2020, these 19 counties voted for the eventual winner of the Presidential election every time from 1980 until 2020.

Yet, in the wee hours of the morning, here was Biden, standing confident.

“Feeling good…We really are. We are still in the game in Georgia, although, that’s not one we expected,” Biden says and smirks slyly at the time. “Feeling real good about Wisconsin and Michigan. And by the way—it’s going to take time to count the votes, but we are going to win Pennsylvania. Talking to the folks in Philly, Allegheny county, and Scranton and they’re really encouraged by the turnout and what they see….”