The map is littered with the countless reasons why Kamala Harris lost.
North Carolina once again proved to be a mirage. Georgia returned to the Republican fold; there wasn’t enough strength in the Atlanta suburbs to get Harris over the top. With half of the votes in, Nevada and Arizona also leaned toward Trump.
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 biggest swing state prize, Pennsylvania, went to Trump and he has the lead in Wisconsin and Michigan.
The vice president lagged behind President Joe Biden’s pace in 2020 with rural Black voters in southern Virginia, eastern North Carolina and southern Georgia. Harris’ suburban performance remained static or appeared to decline marginally in many urban areas. Even the big liberal college districts seemed to underperform the Democratic ticket by a point or two. Trump’s performance in rural areas, meanwhile, improved almost everywhere. He seems to have collected points in the suburbs and especially in the border regions.
Virginia was emblematic of the evening for the Democrats. The call could only be made at 11:42 PM, four hours later than in 2020, because it was closer than expected. It was a result of diminished Democratic margins among voters of color, but also Harris’ failure to reach Biden’s high numbers in Northern Virginia’s suburbs and suburbs — which were supposed to be MAGA killing fields. She won those seats by a wide margin, just not as much as Biden did in 2020.
Florida, which broke even harder to the right, proved even more revealing. No one expected Harris to carry the state, but few expected a 13-point, 1.4 million-plus GOP win. Trump flipped Pinellas County in St. Petersburg and Duval County in Jacksonville four years after losing them to Biden — suggesting that much of the Democratic erosion came from general dissatisfaction with the administration’s performance.
And Florida provided striking evidence of the coming Latino realignment. In two counties with significant Puerto Rican populations — Orlando’s Orange County and neighboring Osceola County — Harris fell well short of Biden’s 2020 margins. Trump even won Osceola, suggesting the “island of trash” controversy during his meeting at Madison Square Garden had a limited effect on the local mood.
In heavily Cuban-American Miami-Dade County, Trump won an overwhelming victory. Just eight years earlier, Trump lost Miami-Dade to Hillary Clinton in a 66-34 landslide. This time he turned the province and won by 10 points.
It was a story that extended beyond Florida state lines. Trump fared stronger in some New Mexico border counties than in 2020. There were signs that Trump’s Latino outreach was gaining 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.
