Kanye West presidential campaign hit a sour note in Maryland, where he received a mere 469 votes in the general election. The rap star/designer’s long shot presidential campaign resulted in an Election Day yawn from voters across the country. According to New York magazine, West, who ran as an Independent, earned about 60,000 votes in the dozen states in which he managed to get himself onto the ballot. Even in his top performing states—Oklahoma, Idaho, and Utah—he reached only .4 percent of the vote, while earning a little more than 10,000 votes in Tennessee.
In Maryland, West qualified as a write-in candidate, which means that, although he was not listed on the ballot, any write-in votes for him would be tabulated. One small bright spot for the aspiring politician: among the state’s 25 approved write-in names, West won the most votes. He was denied a place on Virginia’s ballot.
Despite the showing, West signaled that he isn’t done with political campaigning. On November 4, he issued the following Tweet:
KANYE 2024 pic.twitter.com/Zm2pKcn12t
— ye (@kanyewest) November 4, 2020
Here’s a look at West’s vote totals in the states in which he appeared on the ballot, as reported by New York magazine:
Arkansas: 4,040
Colorado: 6,127
Idaho: 3,092
Iowa: 3,197
Kentucky: 6,259
Louisiana: 4,894
Minnesota: 7,654
Mississippi: 3,117
Oklahoma: 5,590
Tennessee: 10,195
Utah: 4,311
Vermont: 1,255
Luke Mullins is a senior writer at Washingtonian magazine focusing on the people and institutions that control the city’s levers of power. He has written about the Koch Brothers’ attempt to take over The Cato Institute, David Gregory’s ouster as moderator of NBC’s Meet the Press, the collapse of Washington’s Metro system, and the conflict that split apart the founders of Politico.
