False: There were only 133 million registered voters in the U.S. during the 2020 presidential elections.

By: Ankita Kulkarni
January 7 2021

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The US Elections Project reported that at least 159 million ballots were counted in the 2020 elections, but official figures are not yet available On Nov. 3, 2020, Democratic candidate Joe Biden was delcared winner of the US presential election. Biden’s administration will be taking office on Inauguration Day, which is on Jan. 20, 2021. According to data collected by several credible media outlets, Biden received 81 million votes, and Trump received 74 million votes. Despite statements provided by government officials refuting alleged voter fraud in elections, various social media posts claimed that only 133 million voters were registered during the 2020 elections. The posts also stated that Trump got 74 million votes out of 133 million, leaving Biden with 59 million votes and questioning the authenticity in the number of votes cast. There are no official figures available for nationwide registered voters of 2020. However, according to the US Election Project, a nonpartisan website run by Michael McDonald of the University of Florida, there were around 239 million people that were eligible to vote in 2020. Out of these voters, a total of 159 million ballots were counted in the Nov. 3 election. This represented a VEP(Voting eligible population) turnout of 66.7% as per their calculations. According to the latest information published by the US Census Bureau's Voting and Registration Supplement to the Current Population Survey in 2018, there were around 153 million registered voters in the U.S. during the midterm election. Jonathan Robinson, a lead research scientist at Catalist, a voter list vendor that sells data to political campaigns, estimated that the number of registered voters in 2020 elections was somewhere between 195 million and 215 million. Brandi Travis, a spokesperson for Aristotle, another voter list vendor, had also stated to AP news that it had more than 215 million registered voters in its database. Hence, the number of registered voters in all other voter list vendors is well over 133 million. The official figures of the registered voters in the election are yet to be released. However, with the available 2018 data (approximately153 million registered voters), we can establish that the claims made on social media about the total registered voters in the U.S. is 133 million are incorrect.