evidence: Biden flipped five states on his way to winning the Electoral College: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Every other state held to form. [...] But as Andrew Jackson, Samuel Tilden, Grover Cleveland, Al Gore, and Hillary Clinton can all attest, winning the popular vote doesn’t necessarily mean winning the presidency. When you look at the smallest popular vote shift needed to give Trump a victory, the 2020 election was close. Indeed, it was even closer than 2016. If Trump picked up the right mix of 42,921 votes in Arizona (10,457), Georgia (11,779), and Wisconsin (20,682), the Electoral College would have been tied at 269 all. The House would have then decided the election. Republicans will hold the majority of state delegations in the new Congress, and they undoubtedly would have chosen Trump. If Trump had also picked up the one electoral vote in Nebraska’s Second Congressional District, which he lost to Biden by 22,091 votes, he would have won the Electoral College outright. Back in 2016, Clinton needed to pick up the right mix of 78,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to win the Electoral College. [...] The pandemic helped popularize early voting and mail-in ballots. Americans cast 101,453,111 early votes. That is 64.1 percent of the total votes cast in 2020. The total number of mail-in ballots was 65,642,049.