Republicans need to figure out what's going on in New Jersey. Also seeing Kelly Ayotte win the governorship in New Hampshire was encouraging. Illinois is another one that is intriguing. California has a lot more votes to county, but they also seem to have shifted towards the right a bit.

What happened in Texas and Florida is really shocking, and it tells an interesting story. It's incredible how far to the right Florida has moved, and it happened very quickly. Trump winning Florida in 2016 was not all that out of the ordinary, but by all accounts due to the national shift, he should have lost it in 2020, but instead he did better. DeSantis won the governorship in 2018 by less than 1%, but in his first term he completely transformed the state politically. Also should be mentioned Rick Scott was elected by less than 30,000 votes in 2018 and is now likely to become the Senate Majority Leader. Texas has been trending "blue" and in 2020 Trump only won it by 5.5% and about half a million votes. But yesterday Trump won it by 14% and over 1.5M votes. Much of this is due to gains with Hispanics, but it's also do to the fact that a lot of Americans are really feeling like these states are "getting it right." They are creating societies where people feel they can thrive, do business, have families, and live their best lives. Arizona is an interesting state because they have elected quite a few Democrats, but really do seem to fit this mold. The question as we move forward in elections where Trump will not be on the ballot, is how Republicans carry this forward. DeSantis and Abbott have been pretty successful at the state level, but I don't see them as big players in the national brand moving forward. JD and Vivek are going to be a big part of the future. I wonder how Vivek will serve. Whether it will be in the administration as a cabinet official, as governor of Ohio in 2026, or if he is appointed to Vance's Senate seat. Can you imagine this guy in the Senate!

Change from 2020 to 2024... VA: D+10 to D+5 NJ: D+16 to D+5 NY: D+23 to D+12 CT: D+20 to D+13 RI: D+21 to D+14 NH: D+7 to D+3 IL: D+17 to D+8 NM: D+11 to D+6 Granted, the majority of this is not Donald Trump doing massively better in raw vote (save NY where he's +180k) but instead Harris just completely underperforming Biden across the board. Rough. Who would have thought the candidate who dropped out of the primaries before Iowa because she was tanking with her own party would then proceed to... tank with her own party in the general? Shocking.

Blue has been pushed exclusively to the coasts for the most part, minus NM and CO

The data narrative was the only thing keeping me sane (arguably) over the past two weeks as the media put on their full court press. I was fairly confident, but didn't want to jinx it by saying it out loud, but it became pretty obvious the election was following the same pattern of 2016 and 2020 where things shifted towards Trump at the end. The Democrats came out late last week and claimed with no evidence that last minute deciders were breaking towards Harris at 2:1 margins. This was completely bogus, and their claim that it stemmed from the MSG rally were laughable. Trump led by double digits among people who decided in the final week. The entire media narrative the final week or two was so off base and contrived. Tim Alberta coming out the day before the election and saying he had sources in the Trump campaign saying "the bottom is falling out," was all I needed to boost my confidence. Tim Alberta is an absolutely sick human being who is the classic case study of an elitist who looks down on where they came from. His condescension disgusts me.