The 2020 Democratic Presidential Primaries
The 2020 Democratic presidential primary was the largest such race in American history, amassing 29 candidates ranging from former Vice President Joe Biden to spiritual author Marianne Williamson. While most of the candidates dropped out by the Iowa Caucus on February 3, 2020, the field remained large through Super Tuesday.
The heart of the primaries began during incumbent Republican President Donald Trump's first impeachment trial, and voting got underway just as the coronavirus turned into a global pandemic. The pandemic upended all aspects of daily life, including the ongoing presidential election. Many of the state- and party-run primaries were delayed and significantly altered to accommodate absentee voting by mail as a result of the pandemic.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders took an early lead through the first races in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada, but former V.P. Joe Biden's resounding win in South Carolina on February 29 quickly coalesced the field around his candidacy. Most remaining candidates dropped out by Super Tuesday three days later. Sen. Sanders conceded the race to V.P. Biden after the Wisconsin primary on April 7.
Biden picked as his running mate California Sen. Kamala Harris, who also ran in the primary but dropped out before voting began. Biden and Harris went on to defeat Donald Trump and V.P. Mike Pence in the general election on November 3. Trump was the first incumbent president to lose reelection since George H.W. Bush in 1992, and only the tenth president to lose his bid for a second term.
The outgoing president falsely called the election "rigged" in the weeks following the election, embarking on a frenzied effort to overturn the results and remain in power. Trump's attempts to reverse his loss came to a head when he incited a mob of his supporters to violently storm the U.S. Capitol during the certification of the electoral votes on January 6, 2021—going so far as to break into the Senate chamber and trigger an armed standoff at the doors of the House chamber. Just one week before leaving office, he became the first president in history to be impeached twice when the House charged him with incitement of insurrection.