If you think that Kamala Harris’ loss to Donald Trump is just limited to absolutely hemorrhaging votes in the seven swing states — four in the Sun Belt, three in the so-called “blue wall” — you weren’t paying attention to where she was expected to “win easily” on Tuesday.
Yes, Trump won in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and he’s likely to take both Arizona and Nevada once all the dust clears. However, the biggest story was in other states, particularly in states that nobody was watching.
Take states which The New York Times thought she was expected to “win narrowly”: Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Virginia, along with Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District. (Thanks to nutty laws in Maine and Nebraska, some electoral votes are apportioned by congressional district.)
In Maine, Harris is up by 7, Minnesota by 4, Nebraska 2nd by 4, New Hampshire by 3, New Mexico by 6 and Virginia by 5.
Meanwhile, take the “win narrowly” column for Trump: Florida (13 points), Iowa (13 points), Maine 2nd (8 points) and Texas (14 points).
And let’s look at that Iowa result. Remember how Harris was supposed to have put the Hawkeye State into play with that last-minute poll that ended up showing her ahead by 3 points?
Not only was it comically wrong, consider the states that she was expected to “win easily” where the margin was equal to or slimmer than Iowa.
You have Colorado (11 points), Connecticut (13), Illinois (8), New Jersey (5!), New York (12!!), Oregon (13) and Rhode Island (13).
Yikes. If Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are a “blue wall,” that’s a “deep deep deep navy blue, as in basically indistinguishable from black by the naked eye, wall.” All of that was equal to or slimmer than the margin in Iowa, which some intelligent people hyped themselves up into thinking was in play on election night.
Do you believe Americans made the right choice?
And the liberals can’t just hide behind this logic, like MSNBC’s Chris Hayes did, that it’s all the result of that perfidious Electoral College:
Chris Hayes calls the electoral college system “funky” and says we should scrap it. The cope 😂 pic.twitter.com/aVamaflhvI
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) November 6, 2024
This argument doesn’t hold water for a number of reasons, primarily because if the popular vote was worth anything the GOP would have gone all-out to win it as opposed to winning the swing states.
But never mind that because … it turns out Donald Trump is still up in the popular vote, as well!
As of 9 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, Trump still has just over 72.5 million popular votes, or 50.9 percent of the tally. Kamala Harris has 47.6 percent, or 67.8 million. Even as the final results roll in, that’s unlikely to change.
Part of the reason that’s unlikely to change is that all the blue states mentioned before clearly aren’t that blue.
Just look at my home state of New Jersey, where the Bruce Springsteen endorsement doesn’t seem to have helped Kamala. We’ll see how that shakes out, but the last time a Republican won the presidential vote there was with George H.W. Bush in 1988. That’s a good enough reason for the GOP to keep resources out of the state, even though Republican governors aren’t unheard of there.
New Jersey is now just as close as Arizona and Nevada are with over 80 percent of the vote counted. Imagine if money and resources went toward turning the Garden State red. Or Virginia or New Hampshire or Minnesota — the Democratic veep pick’s home state, for the love of Pete, which was only Kamala +4! — the next time around.
We were told the Trump coalition looked different than any other coalition that the GOP had ever tried to assemble to win the presidency. As it turns out, the media was right on that one. And it’s a lot broader of a coalition than we ever could have imagined. Not only does this election bode well for the next four years, it bodes even better for the future of populist conservatism — and for making America great, one election at a time.
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