2020 United States presidential election in California

The 2020 United States presidential election in California was held on Tuesday, November 3, 2020, as part of the 2020 United States presidential election in which all 50 states plus the District of Columbia participated. California voters chose electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote, pitting the Republican Party's nominee, incumbent President Donald Trump, and running mate Vice President Mike Pence against Democratic Party nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his running mate Kamala Harris, the junior senator from California. In the 2020 election, California had 55 electoral votes in the Electoral College, the most of any state. Biden won by a wide margin, as was expected; however, California was one of seven states where Trump received a larger percentage of the two-party vote than he did in 2016. This election also marked the first time since 2004 that the Republican candidate won more than one million votes in Los Angeles County due to increased turnout. California is considered a safe blue state in presidential elections due to large concentrations of Democratic voters in urban regions such as the San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento, Los Angeles, and San Diego. As predicted, Biden easily carried California on election day, earning 63.5% of the vote and a margin of 29.2% over Trump. Biden earned the highest percentage of the vote in the state for any candidate since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936, although Biden's margin of victory was slightly smaller than Hillary Clinton's 30.1% in 2016, making it one of six states in which Trump improved on his 2016 margin. In California with his record 11.1 million votes received, Biden became the first, and as of 2024 the only, candidate in any race in U.S. history to win more than 10 million votes in a single state, while Trump received the most votes a Republican had ever received in a state to that point, narrowly besting his vote total in Texas, a state that he won; four years later his Texas vote total would set a new Republican record. Biden's vote margin was the largest vote margin for a presidential candidate in a singular state. California was also one of five states in the nation in which Biden's victory margin was larger than 1 million raw votes, the others being New York, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Illinois. Per exit polls by Edison Research, Biden dominated such key constituencies in the state as Latinos (75%), African Americans (82%), Asian Americans (76%), and union households (63%). Post-election analysis by Cook Political Report showed Trump made inroads with some Asian American constituencies, particularly Vietnamese American and Filipino American voters. Biden flipped Butte and Inyo Counties into the Democratic column; they had not voted Democratic since 2008 and 1964, respectively. Biden's victory in Orange County was only the second time a Democrat carried the county since 1936, as well as only the fourth time in the county's history. In contrast, while he improved his total vote share by nearly three percentage points, Trump did not flip any counties and his main regions of strength came from Republican strongholds in Gold Country, Shasta Cascade, and parts of the Central Valley. California Secretary of State Alex Padilla certified the results on December 4, and took Harris's seat in the Senate upon her resignation to become Vice President, having been appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom.