The map is splattered with the myriad reasons why Kamala Harris lost.
North Carolina again proved to be a mirage. Georgia returned to the Republican fold — there wasn’t enough juice in the Atlanta suburbs to put Harris over the top. With more than half the vote in, Nevada and Arizona were also leaning Trump’s way.
The map looks closer to 2016 than 2020 — with closer than expected races in Minnesota, New Hampshire and Virginia, and a sea of red across the South from North Carolina all the way to El Paso. The Blue Wall disintegrated, marked by losses in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The vice president lagged behind President Joe Biden’s 2020 pace with rural Black voters in southern Virginia, eastern North Carolina and south Georgia. Harris’ suburban performance remained static or appeared to decline marginally in many metro areas. Even the big liberal college counties seemed to underperform for the Democratic ticket by a point or two. Trump’s rural performance, meanwhile, was enhanced nearly everywhere. He appears to have picked up points in the exurbs and especially in border counties.
Virginia was emblematic of the evening for Democrats. It couldn’t be called until 11:42 pm, four hours later than in 2020, because it was closer than expected. It was a function of diminished Democratic margins with voters of color but also Harris’ failure to hit Biden’s high marks in the suburbs and exurbs of Northern Virginia — which were supposed to be MAGA killing fields. She won those places by a lot, just not as much as Biden in 2020.
Florida, which broke even harder right, proved even more revealing. No one expected Harris to capture the state, but few anticipated a 13-point, 1.4 million vote-plus GOP win. Trump flipped St. Petersburg’s Pinellas County and Jacksonville’s Duval County four years after he lost them to Biden — suggesting much of the Democratic erosion stemmed from general discontent with the administration’s performance.
And Florida delivered glaring evidence of the coming Latino realignment. In two counties with significant Puerto Rican populations — Orlando's Orange County and neighboring Osceola County — Harris ran well behind Biden's 2020 margins. Trump even won Osceola, suggesting the 'island of garbage' controversy from his Madison Square Garden rally had limited effect on the local vote.
In heavily Cuban American Miami-Dade County, Trump won a blow-out-the-doors victory. Just eight years earlier, Trump lost Miami-Dade to Hillary Clinton in a 66-34 landslide. This time, he flipped the county, winning by 10 points.
It was a story that expanded beyond Florida state lines. Trump ran stronger in some New Mexico border counties than in 2020. There were signs Trump’s Latino outreach got traction in eastern Pennsylvania. Then there was 97 percent Latino Starr County, Texas. In 2016, Trump was slaughtered there — 79-19. Four years later, he made it competitive. This year? Not even close — a 58-42 Trump victory.
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