TL;DR - 2020 would resolve NO because of the January 6 insurrection.
For this question, "states" includes DC since it also votes for President, and "the actual result" is that declared by credible news media.
This question is a conjunction of all of the following:
in each state, polling places open normally, everywhere they're usually set up, plus mail-in/drop box voting where applicable;
in each state, votes are able to be cast normally and they're all included in the count;
in each state, the officially proclaimed result matches the actual one;
in each state, at least 50% of electoral votes are cast for the winner, according to the actual result;
the candidate that would get the nationwide majority of electoral votes if there were no faithless electors, according to the actual result, actually gets a majority of electoral votes;
Congress certifies as winner the winner according to the actual result;
the winner gets inaugurated on January 20 and effectively acts as President;
none of these steps are threatened or disrupted by significant violence.
The assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 would mean that election did not happen "normally", by this question's criteria. Credible news reports will be used to ascertain the outcome of this question.
Minor flaws such as a limited number of polling places opening late due to malfunctioning voting machines, or deviations from normality that are not related to a deliberate derailing of the process, for example the President-elect failing to be inaugurated on January 20 due to sickness, are not enough to resolve this as NO.
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@oh for the purposes of this question, I defined:
> "States" includes DC since it also votes for President, and "the actual result" is that declared by credible news media.
What I mean by that is the candidate which, according to the best of our knowledge as reported by credible news sources, is the one that won the popular vote. In Maine and Nebraska, this applies statewide and also to each Congressional district, since they split their votes.
That subquestion is basically "will at least 50% of electors be faithful to the popular vote?"
@BrunoParga If a state does not have a majority popular vote winner, would you consider that by itself to be an abnormality?
@DanPowell no. That is a fairly common occurrence, isn't it? Like, the "spirit" of the question here is that elections are generally normal, but 2020 wasn't because of the attack on the Capitol, and there is a considerable chance (which is what we're trying to estimate with this market) of something going abnormally in 2024. People voting such that no candidate has an outright majority in a state is not abnormal.
@BrunoParga so that basically means the electors are assigned as set forth by that state’s procedure for assigning electors and there isn’t massive disagreement about what the vote totals are (something like Florida in Bush/Gore would be near the far end of what is normal, while Georgia in 2020 would the near side of abnormal)?
@DanPowell I think "that state's procedure" is the crux here. If a state decides its procedure is just to ignore the popular vote (as reported by independent organizations - what I am calling the "actual result" for the purpose of this question), and just let the legislature decide, I'd say that's abnormal.
I know what happened in '00 and I have no idea how I would judge that - possibly, as you said, on the far end of normal - and I don't know/remember what went on in Georgia in '20. Why do you say it's in the near side of abnormal?
@Frogswap given that it is within states' legal power to decide ballot access rules, I would say that any given candidate being or not being on the ballot does not affect the resolution of this question.