The 2020 United States presidential election in New York took place on November 3, 2020. All fifty states and the District of Columbia were part of the 2020 United States presidential election. New York voters chose twenty-nine electors to the Electoral College, which selected the President and Vice-President.
New York was won by incumbent Democratic President William C. Holland, who was running against Republican Senator John Dickenson of Mississippi. Holland ran with Vice-President Robert Holtzman of Illinois, and Dickenson ran with Governor Charles Beauregard of Louisiana.
Holland carried the state in a historic landslide, taking 73.08% of the vote to Dickenson's 26.63%, a victory margin of 46.45%. This marked only the second election in American history in which a Democratic presidential candidate won every county in the state of New York. Holland not only dominated traditionally Democratic cities like New York City, Albany, Buffalo, Ithaca, Syracuse, and Rochester, but also swept traditionally Republican counties in upstate New York and on Long Island. This marked the first time since 1964 that Allegany, Genessee, Livingston, Orleans, Tioga, Wayne, Wyoming, Putnam, and Steuben Counties voted Democratic and the first time since 1968 that Hamilton and Greene Counties did so. Unlike some analogous Northeastern and Midwestern counties where Holland won only very narrowly, such as Perry in Pennsylvania and Ford in Illinois, he won several of these normally Republican upstate counties by large margins: Putnam and Steuben Counties were won for the Democratic Party by nineteen and ten points, respectively, and Livingston County by eleven points.
This result made Holland one of only four presidential candidates who have been able to sweep every county in New York State, the others being Warren G. Harding in 1920, Calvin Coolidge in 1924, and Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.
New York weighed in for this election as 12.85% more Democratic than the national average.
Holland swept all five boroughs of New York City, the first presidential candidate in twenty years to do so. In the borough of the Bronx, Holland broke 90% of the vote, the first presidential candidate ever to do so. Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens voted over 80% Democratic. Even normally Republican Staten Island, which has voted Democratic only five times since 1924, gave more than 60% of its votes to Holland. Overall, Holland received about 88% of the vote in New York City, the highest total ever won by a presidential candidate. With 2,340,028 votes from the five boroughs, Holland also received more votes in New York City than any other presidential candidate in history, surpassing the record of 2,183,646 votes which had been set by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.
Outside of New York City, Holland broke 60% in 33 counties and 70% in 4 counties: Tompkins County, home to Ithaca; Albany County, home to Albany, New York's state capital; Ulster County, home to Kingston; and suburban Westchester County, north of New York City, home to White Plains. The President swept all twenty-seven of New York's congressional districts.
The staunch conservative John Dickenson was widely seen in the liberal Northeastern United States as a right-wing extremist; he had voted against the Criminal Justice Reform Act of 2020, and the Holland campaign portrayed him as a warmonger who as President would instigate military conflict. Thus Dickenson performed especially weakly in liberal northeastern states like New York; indeed, he wrote off this state, along with New Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware from the beginning of his presidential campaign. Polls suggested, by September 2020, that Holland would carry the state by more than forty percentage points-a prediction which turned out to be startlingly accurate. That year, Holland won every northeastern state, including New York, with landslides of over sixty percent of the vote, solidifying the region's status as the most Democratic in the nation.
The results of the election in New York are typical of President Holland's almost universal popularity across the United States by this time. The only state that did not send electors for Holland was Dickenson's home state of Mississippi, along with Nebraska's 3rd congressional district. Holland's 73.08% vote share remains the highest any presidential candidate of either party has ever received in New York State. His 46.45% victory margin also remains the widest margin by which any presidential candidate has ever carried the state, surpassing Warren G. Harding's 37.61% margin in the 1920 presidential election.
Results[]
Party | Candidate | Votes | % | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Democratic | William C. Holland (incumbent) | 5,643,087 | 73.08% | |
Republican | John Dickenson | 2,056,314 | 26.63% | |
Total votes | 7,721,795 | 100% |