Now that the dust has just about settled on the 2020 presidential election, this might be a good time to look at some of the numbers that this most interesting race produced.

As just about everyone knows by now, the Electoral College results determine the president of the United States, not the popular vote.

In 2016, Trump came out on top with 304 electoral votes to Clinton’s 227. There were seven “faithless” electors who were pledged to Trump or Clinton but who voted for others. Clinton won the popular vote by 2.86 million.

In 2020, Biden won the presidency by picking up 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232. There were no “faithless” electors this time around.

The record turnout gave Biden 81,283,093 popular votes (51.3%) to Trump’s 74,222,958 (46.9%). Other candidates had 7,060,140 votes (1.8%).

This is interesting, though: Biden won 25 states and the District of Columbia, and Trump won 25 states. Vermont gave Biden the largest majority - 66.1%, while Wyoming favored Trump the most with 69.9%. The District of Columbia went for Biden in a big way, with 92.1% of the vote.

Biden captured Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes by beating Trump by 81,660 votes. The final tally was Biden 3,459,923 to Trump’s 3,378,263. Libertarian party candidate Jo Jorgensen received 79,397 votes. The combined total of votes cast in the Pennsylvania presidential race - 6,917,583 - shattered a record.

Although Trump and his allies have tried every which way from Sunday to overturn the results of the election by claiming, without merit or substantiation, massive voter fraud, in the end the effort was in vain.

Despite an assault on the Capitol while Congress was in session to formalize the Electoral College outcome, some congressional allies in both the House and Senate attempted on Jan. 6 to derail the certification of Biden’s victory by challenging the results in key battleground states, namely Pennsylvania and Arizona. All they succeeded in doing was to delay the inevitable by a few hours and by angering their colleagues who thought that after the invasion of the Capitol that they should have put their challenges aside. Among the challengers was U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser, whose district includes Carbon and Schuylkill counties.

This presidential election, along with the 2016 race, will be sliced and diced by political analysts for years. As more and more Trump, Clinton and Biden insiders become willing to give us intimate information about the internal operations of the two campaigns, we will begin to get a picture of how Trump pulled off his 2016 win, how Hillary Clinton blew her chance to become the first woman to win the White House and how Biden overcame a campaign that was close to flatlining at one point before his pivotal South Carolina victory in the primaries.

Taking notes on conversations I had with voters in all five of the Times News counties, I am attempting to identify the root causes as to why there is a virtual line of demarcation that splits the results in Carbon-Schuylkill counties with those in Northampton-Lehigh-Monroe counties.

Part, but not all of it, can be explained by voter registration. Republicans have the edge in the two counties that went for Trump, while Democrats have margins in the other three. Voters in Carbon and Schuylkill supported Trump by 65% and 69%, respectively, while voters in Northampton supported Biden 49.8%-49.1%, in Lehigh 53.2%-45.6% and in Monroe 52.6%-46.2%.

Despite the controversy that has swirled around Trump’s four years in office, topped off by charges of aiding and abetting rioting, insurrection and sedition by his supporters’ invasion of the Capitol, the man is revered by his backers in this area, even after the Jan. 6 events in the nation’s capital. I have gotten these types of responses - “Best president ever,” “I’m not crazy about his style, but he says what’s on his mind, and I know where I stand with him. No B.S.,” “he kept most of the promises he made, including building the wall.”

While some Republicans have backed away from him after the Jan. 6 events, others insist that leftist infiltrators were responsible for most of the rioting, which the FBI has said is not true. Others said they understood how his supporters, frustrated at what they considered a “stolen election” - allegations refuted over and over by bipartisan election officials, the courts and investigatory agencies - wanted to show their pent-up feelings in a dramatic (and illegal) way.

Many Democrats said they voted for Biden not so much because they found him to be an especially strong candidate but because they wanted to prevent Trump from winning another term.

Others said - “thank God we’ll have some normalcy again in our lives,” “Joe Biden is a decent man, the kind of person we need right now to get us through these tough times.”

During the last week of 2020, the Gallup Organization announced that American respondents chose Trump as the most admired man in the world, beating out former President Barack Obama. According to poll results, Trump was named by 18% of respondents; 15% named Obama; 6% named Biden, and 3% named Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases. One can only wonder what a similar poll might find today.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com