The 2020 election cycle was one of the most bizarre and challenging in the history of the United States. From pushing the safeguards within our institutions to their limit, to the questioning of truth within the electoral system, to the widespread and massive reforms to voting that affected nearly every American, this election was unlike any that had come before it. The machinations of various individuals, including the outgoing president, and the events that transpired during and after the campaign are still being reviewed by various authorities. More importantly, the long-term impact of those events on the system and the electorate has yet to be fully understood. Under the specter of all that has occurred, Michael Nelson and the contributors to this edited volume offer what is the first summary of the history and analysis of events that occurred during the election cycle in the aptly titled volume The Elections of 2020.

This is the tenth entry in Dr. Nelson’s series on presidential elections. Like the earlier nine books, this one serves as a chronicle of an election cycle: it covers nearly every aspect of the process resulting in the election of Joe Biden. Also like its predecessors, it does a very good job in this task. By its nature the book is retrospective, outlining the events that occurred or discussing their significance at our current point in history. It is not meant to be a predictive analysis of where our elections may be going, but instead serves as a summary of what happened. Several of the authors are among the leading scholars of elections, public opinion, and the presidency, including Gary Jacobson, Marc Hetherington, Andrew Rudalevige, and Paul Quirk, among others; several of these authors were involved in previous iterations of the series. However, Nelson has also included newcomers, such as Charles Hunt on campaign finance, and Candis Watts Smith who, along with Nicole Mellow, offers an excellent chapter on what the 2020 election meant with regard to identity.

The overarching theme that pervades this edition of the series is the fundamental and growing divide in American politics or polarization. Nearly every chapter in some way relates to how polarization is driving candidates and their supporters in their message, campaign, communications, and behavior. Even the media are swept up in polarization as they seek ratings and views. In their analysis of this theme, the authors do a wonderful job highlighting the movement away from issues dominating the political landscape, as they once did, and toward understanding how political identity defines the current situation and how this fosters our partisan political divide. While discussing the rise of negative partisanship, Andrew Rudalevige sums up this rise of polarization by claiming that people “are increasingly driven less by positive fandom for their side than by disgust with the other team” (p. 216). Marc Hetherington is even more blunt when he writes, “The sad fact is that most Republicans hate the Democratic Party and most Democrats hate the Republican Party” (p. 68).

There is also a subtheme within the chapters focused on the questioning or loss of truth that happened during the 2020 election cycle. This is exemplified in the failure to accept the results of the election by Trump supporters, the promulgating of the “big lie,” the widespread conspiracy theories that spread throughout social media, and a fundamental mistrust in nearly anyone who is not part of one’s party. The idea that truth is slipping away in our political system in some way enters nearly every discussion. Although partisanship and the growing divide clearly make up the overall theme, a loss of truth certainly also underpins it.

Michael Nelson begins with a great chapter on who now qualifies to become president and how that evolved through the 2020 cycle. Candidates today are more diverse in terms of race, professional experiences, beliefs, social characteristics, and age than ever before in American history. Even very public missteps are now not necessarily disqualifiers for the presidency. Nelson argues that this expanded talent pool from which we now draw candidates is a benefit. On one dimension, Trump and Biden define the current extremes of this pool, even though both are older and white, insofar as Biden is the classic insider with 50 years of climbing the political ladder, whereas Trump is the populist outsider with a disdain for Washington, DC. This is an idea that Gerald Pomper partially revisits in his concluding chapter on the evolution of our politics from Kennedy through Biden.

There is also a fine chapter by Marjorie Hershey describing the role of the media and their effect on the partisan divide in 2020. Although a portion of the chapter is devoted to how media responded to the new realities and covered the candidates, especially Trump, the second half discusses the impact of social media on the election. More specifically, Hershey looks at how misinformation, energized by social media, invaded the consciousness of the American voter and how it was mobilized by Trump and his supporters to fuel his claims of fraud. The chapter presents a necessary analysis of one of the chief mechanisms that is encouraging polarization and the impact of this now-dominant media source on the electorate. It sheds light on how the rapid-fire pace and quick burn of social media were used to erode truth and, in turn, undermine our collective faith in the institutions that govern us.

Although there is an excellent chapter on turnout, shifts in the electorate, and voter behavior in 2020 by Marc Hetherington, there is precious little discussion of the new ways in which Americans could vote in this election. This election brought voting by mail, early voting, drop boxes, and other reforms to nearly every part of the country, driven by the unrelenting impact of the COVID-19 virus. These changes are likely permanent in many places, and their impact will be profound and their effects radical. A failure to discuss them at length seems like a major oversight, especially given the unfounded fraud accusations leveled by Trump and his acolytes in the wake of their loss, which often targeted these reforms. If this book aims to be a summary of all aspects of the election of 2020, it really should have included a discussion of these voting reforms and their impact.

A great many of the books on the 2020 election have thus far focused on sensational elements, generating splashy news interviews or hyperpartisan reviews of actions or activities. Although its utility certainly goes far beyond an academic setting, at its heart, this is a book written by political scientists for political scientists: it works hard to present the facts of what happened in the 2020 election cycle without spin or partisanship. It is an important record and will serve as an excellent place to start our collective consideration of where American elections are going in the future. It would be an excellent addition to an undergraduate class on elections. Unlike so many things that have been written about the Trump era of American politics, this is a good and useful book. The editor and contributors should be commended for their efforts to accurately chronicle and discuss one of the strangest and most controversial times in modern American politics.