In the 2024 presidential election, 20 million votes have “gone missing” or are unaccounted for.
This is incorrect. Votes are still being counted, and full results for candidates are yet to be announced—although enough have been counted for the election to have been definitively called for Donald Trump and Kamala Harris has conceded.
False claims that 20 million votes have gone “missing” from the 2024 US presidential election have been circulating on social media since it was called in favour of Donald Trump.
In the hours and days after the election result was called people posting on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and Threads claimed that 20 million votes have gone “unaccounted for” in the 2024 presidential election, with some adding this was despite “record turnout”.
Some on Threads also claimed that the election had been “stolen”, and made comparisons with the total number of votes cast in the 2020 and 2016 elections
But these posts are missing important context, as votes in the US election which took place on 5 November are still being counted at the time of writing.
In 2020, there were a total of 158.4 million votes cast across all candidates. So far there have been over 155 million ballots counted, and again the 2024 count has not yet finished. A difference in the number of votes cast between the two most recent presidential elections will not amount to 20 million.
Voter turnout in 2020 stood at 66.38% which was at the time the highest of the 21st century.
According to the University of Florida Election Lab, as of 12 November, turnout so far in this year’s US election (which also saw the whole of the House of Representatives and 34 seats in the Senate contested) is 63.51% across the US at the time of writing. Some predict that once all votes have been tallied, this year’s turnout will be close to the 2020 record.
While all states have counted most of their votes, in a number of states votes are still being counted—including the highly populous state of California, where only an estimated 79% of votes have been counted at the time of writing. For example, other states that counted fewer than 99% of votes on 12 November are Utah, Oregon, Alaska, Maryland and Washington.
This means the total number of votes for presidential candidates won’t be known and certified until counting in each of the 50 states concludes, which often takes days and could run to weeks.
At the time of writing, Ms Harris’s vote total stands at around 72.3 million, while Mr Trump’s is around 75.5 million. This compares to 74.2 million votes lodged for Mr Trump in the 2020 presidential election, and 81.3 million for Joe Biden.
In the 2016 election, Mr Trump won the presidency with just under 63 million votes, while Hillary Clinton lost with just under 65.9 million votes. While Mrs Clinton won the popular vote, winning the Oval Office is not decided on which candidate gets the biggest popular vote, instead it depends on who wins a majority of 270 or more electoral college votes.
Mr Trump won 312 electoral college votes in 2024, which means he will be the next US president, and Ms Harris has conceded the election.
Misleading claims about election results can undermine trust in the process of democracy. It’s important to consider whether what you are seeing online is accurate before sharing posts on social media.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as partly false because votes are still being counted in many states meaning comparisons with previous elections aren't accurate.
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