How many popular votes did Joe Biden receive in 2020 (official totals)?

1. The headline number: how many votes did Biden receive (official totals)?

Credible, repeatedly cited tallies list Joe Biden’s national popular‑vote total in 2020 at approximately 81.2 million votes — often reported more precisely as about 81,284,000 — while Donald Trump received about 74.2 million; these totals are reflected in major reporting and election‑data aggregators that draw on state certifications and Federal Election Commission summaries ^{[1] [2] [5]}.

2. Why sources sometimes show different figures or appear to conflict

Apparent discrepancies in reported totals can arise from misreading tables, looking at partial or provisional returns, or grabbing figures for the wrong candidate column in multi‑column official PDFs; for example, one FEC document snippet in the search results contains a string of numbers that, when taken out of context, can be mistaken for Biden’s total though it aligns with Trump’s 74.2 million figure in other sources ^{[6] [2]}. News organizations and civic trackers consolidated state‑certified results in the days and weeks after the election, and those consolidated figures — not early call projections — are what underpin the commonly cited 81.2–81.3 million total ^{[1] [2] [7]}.

3. Context: record turnout and what the total means politically

Biden’s roughly 81.2–81.3 million votes set a new record for raw votes received by a presidential candidate amid the highest turnout in more than a century; analysts emphasize that the raw popular‑vote record reflects both wide participation and the pandemic‑era spike in mail‑in and early voting rather than a simple surge in one demographic ^{[1] [4] [8]}. The popular‑vote margin — about four to 4.4 percentage points in Biden’s favor depending on the exact denominator used — underscores that while Biden won convincingly in votes nationwide, the Electoral College outcome (306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232) is the constitutional determinant of the presidency ^{[3] [4] [8]}.

4. How reliably "official" is the 81.2–81.3M figure and where to verify it

The 81.2–81.3 million tally is the consolidated, post‑certification national popular vote total reported by respected outlets and aggregators that compile state certification data and FEC summaries; Ballotpedia, major national newspapers, and national outlets reported Biden at about 81.2 million, and legacy outlets noted Biden surpassed Barack Obama’s 2008 record of roughly 69.5 million votes ^{[2] [5] [1]}. The single most authoritative raw sources remain state certification statements and the Federal Election Commission’s compiled reports; if a user needs an exact digit for formal purposes, those primary documents should be checked directly because some secondary summaries round to the nearest hundred thousand or report slightly different last digits depending on timing ^{[6] [7]}.

5. Read the fine print: rounding, late adjustments, and narratives that follow numbers

Rounding conventions and the occasional late discovery of a small batch of uncounted ballots in a county or a state can change totals by a few hundred or thousand votes, but the post‑certification national totals reported by multiple independent trackers converged on the ~81.2–81.3 million figure and a roughly 4‑point margin; disputes about legitimacy after the election were litigated and largely rejected by courts and state officials, while federal security officials characterized the 2020 vote as secure — context that helps explain why the numeric record is treated as settled by mainstream data projects ^{[7] [8] [1]}.