The 2020 United States presidential election in Oklahoma 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. Oklahoma 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 California Senator Kamala Harris. Oklahoma has seven electoral votes in the Electoral College.
Trump easily carried Oklahoma on Election Day by a margin of 33.08%, down from 36.39 points in 2016. Oklahoma was one of two states where Trump won every county (though Oklahoma County was won by a plurality of votes, compared to the absolute majorities achieved across the state), the other being West Virginia. This also signaled the fifth consecutive election in which the Republican candidate carried every county in the state, including those counties encompassed by Native American reservations. In this election, Trump also became the first presidential candidate ever to win more than a million votes in Oklahoma. Biden, however, came within 3,326 votes of winning Oklahoma's most populous county Oklahoma County, and won more than 40% of the vote in Oklahoma's second-most populous county Tulsa. No Democratic presidential candidate has won Oklahoma County since Lyndon B. Johnson in his 1964 landslide, or Tulsa County since Franklin D. Roosevelt in his 1936 landslide. This is the first election since 2000 in which not every county voted in the majority for the Republican, as Oklahoma County was won by Republicans with a 49.21% plurality. However, these gains in urban Oklahoma were partly offset by continued falloff in southeast Oklahoma, where Biden even underperformed Hillary Clinton's performance four years earlier in most counties.
Primary elections
The primary elections were held on Super Tuesday, March 3, 2020.
Republican primary
Donald Trump and Bill Weld were among the declared Republican candidates.
Trump won the state in a landslide victory against his five opponents.
Democratic primary
Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and former Vice President Joe Biden were the major declared Democratic candidates.
Libertarian nominee
- Jo Jorgensen, Psychology senior lecturer at Clemson University
Independent candidates
Three unaffiliated candidates filed to be on the Oklahoma presidential ballot, all by paying a $35,000 fee. Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins filed a lawsuit challenging the amount of the filing fee.
- Brock Pierce, cryptocurrency entrepreneur and former child actor
- Jade Simmons, concert artist, speaker, and author
- Kanye West, musician
Ballot order
Oklahoma determines ballot order by lot, with unaffiliated candidates listed below candidates of recognized parties. The drawing was held on July 16, with the resulting order for political parties being Republican, Libertarian, Democrat. The unaffiliated candidates for president were listed in this order: Jade Simmons, Kanye West, Brock Pierce.
General election
Results
By congressional district
Trump won all five congressional districts.
Electors
- Republican Party electors
Ronda Vuillemont-Smith, Lonnie Lu Anderson, Chris Martin, Steve Fair, Linda Huggard, A. J. Ferate, Carolyn McLarty
- Libertarian Party electors
Erin Adams, Danny Chabino, Drew Cook, Kevin Hobbie, Rex Lawhorn, Jay Norton, Victoria Whitfield
- Democratic Party electors
Judy Eason McIntyre, Eric Proctor, Jeff Berrong, Christine Byrd, Demetrios Bereolos, Pamela Iron, Shevonda Steward
- Electors for Jade Simmons
Shanda Carter, Terrence Stephens, Hope Stephens, Elizabeth Stephens, Dakota Hooks, Phalanda Boyd, Quincy Boyd
April Anderson, Craig Alan Weygandt, Will Flanagan, Tom Krup, Megan Krup, Gretchen Schrupp, David Schrupp
- Electors for Brock Pierce
Robert Murphy, Susan Darlene Murphy, Richard Prawdzienski, Jessy Artman, David Selinger, Shane Wayne Howell, Angela McCaslin
Analysis
Oklahoma, a majority-White, mainly-rural state sandwiched between the South and the Midwest, has long been a Republican stronghold at the presidential level, although Democrats did well in state-level elections until the 2000s. Four of five congressional seats are considered non-competitive for Democrats, and it has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon B. Johnson carried it in 1964, against the backdrop of his nationwide landslide victory. Oklahoma was last competitive at the presidential level in 1996.
Despite Trump's win in the state, Biden came less than 1 percentage point of flipping the rapidly-urbanizing Oklahoma County, which hosts the state capital, while he also reduced Trump's margin of victory in Tulsa County. Meanwhile, Trump carried the state's only Hispanic-majority county of Texas, located in the Oklahoma panhandle. He also held onto the only two plurality-Native American counties in the state: Adair and Cherokee, both encompassed by the Cherokee Reservation, and the latter hosting the tribal capital in Tahlequah. Trump also exhibited considerable strength in the historically Democratic region known as "Little Dixie," carrying Oklahoma's 2nd congressional district by 54%. The counties encompassed by the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muscogee, Seminole, Osage, and Pawnee reservations were all captured by Trump by large margins.
Per exit polls by the Associated Press, Trump's strength in Oklahoma came from whites, with 71% support; he narrowly won 50% of the state's non-white vote (most notably from the state's large Native American population). Oklahoma, often termed the "Buckle of the Bible Belt", is a very religious state, with Trump capturing the Protestant vote by 78%.