The 2020 United States presidential election in North Dakota 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. North Dakota voters chose electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote, pitting the Republican nominee, incumbent President Donald Trump from Florida, and running mate Vice President Mike Pence from Indiana against Democratic nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden from Delaware, and his running mate Senator Kamala Harris of California. North Dakota has three electoral votes in the Electoral College.
Trump easily won North Dakota 65.1% to 31.8%, a margin of 33.34%, about three points down from his 36-point victory in 2016. Joe Biden won the same two counties Walter Mondale, Al Gore and Hillary Clinton won in 1984, 2000 and 2016 respectively: the majority-Native American counties of Rolette and Sioux, both of which have long been Democratic strongholds. However, Biden only came 2.7 points short of winning Cass County, which holds the state's largest city of Fargo, as compared to Clinton's 10.5-point loss in 2016.
Biden became the first Democrat to win the presidency without winning Sargent County since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944 and the first without Benson, Ransom, or Steele Counties since John F. Kennedy in 1960. Despite Biden's modest improvement over Hillary Clinton four years earlier, this is the third-worst Democratic performance in the state since 1980, and the 2024 election. Trump's vote share was also the largest for any candidate in the state since 1952.
Caucuses
Democratic caucuses
The North Dakota Democratic–NPL Party held a firehouse caucus on March 10, 2020.
All of the withdrawn candidates had withdrawn from the race while mail-in voting had already begun.
Republican caucuses
The North Dakota Republican Party held a non-binding firehouse caucus on March 10, 2020, with incumbent President Donald Trump running unopposed.
The party then formally selected their 29 Republican National Convention delegates, unpledged to any particular candidate at the state party convention. The state party convention was originally scheduled for March 27–29, but due to concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic it was ultimately cancelled.
Libertarian nominee
- Jo Jorgensen, Psychology Senior Lecturer at Clemson University
General election
Polling
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Polls with a sample size of <100 have their sample size entries marked in red to indicate a lack of reliability.
Aggregate polls
Polls
Electoral slates
These slates of electors were nominated by each party in order to vote in the Electoral College should their candidate win the state:
Results
By congressional district
Due to the state's low population, only one congressional district is allocated. This district is an at-large district, because it covers the entire state, and thus is equivalent to the statewide election results.
Analysis
North Dakota, a rural state covered in the Midwestern Plains, is one of the most reliably Republican states in the nation. It last voted for a Democrat in 1964, when Lyndon B. Johnson carried it against the backdrop of his nationwide landslide victory. Since 1964, North Dakota has been competitive in only three elections: 1976, 1996, and 2008.
A few prime reasons why this state votes heavily for Republicans include its older, majority-White populace; agribusiness; and the state's recent oil boom. In recent presidential elections, Bakken shale oil has been a major driver of conservative success in the state, as the oil boom increasingly fuels the economy of North Dakota. The main oil boom has taken place in the western counties—perhaps Trump's main base. Trump signed executive orders on his first month in office, reviving the Keystone and Dakota Access Pipelines rejected by the Obama administration.