American elections are ripe for information overload. With dozens of states and thousands of counties, the story of the night can be told and retold in endless ways.
But it’s the simplest number that best sums up Donald Trump’s remarkable return to the presidency: 72 million Americans voted for him, and 67 million voted for Kamala Harris.
That may not be how presidents are chosen — the labyrinthine electoral college system means the nationwide leader can, and often does, lose the election.
It’s also not a final figure, with votes left to count in California that will likely narrow, but not eliminate, Trump’s lead.
But it’s a striking result because it’s something Republicans rarely win — Joe Biden beat Trump by millions of votes on that measure, as did Hillary Clinton, helped by massive margins in populous states like California and New York.
Not this time.
The blue fade
In bluest New York, Biden’s 2020 lead has been halved. In California, it has been eroded by 12 percentage points, with the important caveat that many Democrat-skewed mail-in votes are yet to be counted.
And even in Massachusetts and DC — the US equivalents of Melbourne and Canberra, as John Howard might put it — Trump gained eight points and two points respectively.
None of which disproves the conventional wisdom that the country is bitterly divided. Harris still won at least three-quarters of the vote in San Francisco, Manhattan and Boston.
But it is the “swing”, in Australian vernacular, which decides elections, and the swing to Trump was remarkably uniform. Only in conservative Utah and liberal Washington has Harris improved on Biden’s margins, both by a matter of inches.
Not that this reflects on Harris herself, necessarily — her position in opinion polls was stronger than Biden’s had been before he dropped out of the race, dangling the unanswerable question of whether Biden might even have lost “safe” states like New Jersey had he remained the candidate.
More tangible is what this means for the future.
The polarised electoral map that had characterised the Trump era saw a sea of red in rural areas balanced out by the blue splotches of the cities.
Winning pivotal states like Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan was about who could “get out the vote” in their respective turfs, and then win the balance in the more finely balanced suburbs.
This win was different and has shaken that path for Democrats.
Trump got out the vote in rural areas, where he gained even more ground than before. But while voter numbers were also strong in cities, especially those in swing states, they too swung to Trump.
The end of the rainbow?
It is a similar story in the demographic breakdown of the results, which we don’t know with precision but can approximate with the results of Votecast, a voter survey from the Associated Press.
Again, the conventional story has been that American voters are polarised along almost every demographic divide — between white voters and non-white, young and old, male and female, and those with and without college degrees.
Barack Obama’s ability to win among women, young voters and non-white voters — dubbed his “rainbow coalition” — was key to his electoral success.
And while there were some signs this was eroding in 2020, like the shift to Trump among Hispanic voters in Florida and Texas, it was still key the Democrats’ path for victory.
But this time, Trump gained among almost every demographic group.
Among voters under 30, he gained 19 points. Among black voters, 16 points. Among those with Puerto Rican ancestry, 15 points. Among those with college degrees, six points.
There were important differences within groups. Much has been made of the “bros for Trump” momentum, and he did gain a particularly pronounced swing among young men (+14) and especially young black men (+18).
But even so, young women (+14) and black women (+7) shifted the same way. Even the demographic of “childless cat ladies,” disparaged by vice-president-elect JD Vance, Harris claimed by only 12 points.
In all these cases, the gaps still exist and are in many cases wide.
But the shift was enough to matter.
Among young women in Michigan alone, Harris’ slide was worth more than 100,000 votes, most of the margin of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in that state.
Young women swung to Trump by a substantial margin, as did voters in most demographic groups. (Reuters: Jeenah Moon)
And among black women in Georgia alone, the Democratic ticket slid 70,000 votes, more than enough to flip the state.