It shocks me that people are shocked about the result. Just like the last edition the two main points are the same.
1. At a macro level, we did not learn anything new about American voters. There were some subtle shifts in demographics and rural voters turned up more, but let's look at the difference making states:
2016: Trump won because he got MI by 0.23%, PA by 0.72% and WI by 0.77% . Total < 80k votes
2020: Biden : GA by 0.23%, AZ by 0.31% and WI by 0.63% . Total < 42k votes (note: if Trump had won these states it would be 269-269 and he had the tiebreaker in his favor)
2024: Trump : MI by 0.5%, PA by 1.9% and WI by 0.9%. Total < 240k votes . Is that a large number? No : Just 0.16% of those who voted or 0.1% of all eligible voters.
At a micro level, some voting patters (e.g. Latino, Black men) shifted every so slightly, the Gaza issue alone lost Michigan for Harris, etc, but these are still small contributors to the overall numbers.
2. Poll synthesis was quite accurate. Just like in 2020, each candidate comfortably won each state they were supposed to win, and Trump won (almost) all the toss up states by tiny margins within the margin of error. You could argue that most states were off by about 2-3% in Trump's direction. Well.. that is within the margin of error, and the best pundits (e.g. nate silver, nate cohn) kept saying that the toss ups are likely to go in one direction. I think that direction is easy to guess, because they also said Trump voters were less likely to respond to polls.
In summary, pay attention to polls, look at margin of error, and don't dismiss them in the 'paid off' category.
What about the Senate? Exact same story (and more even in the tossups).
What about the house? Exact same story (and more even in the tossups).
For a situation this complex, with so many issues, the good pollsters are remarkably accurate. It is quite insane that there are no big upsets among any state/house seat/senate race ! Just like last time.
Michigan
The total voting number was pretty much the same as last year. Some rural counties went more red this time, and Trump won by 80k votes this time. The entire margin comes from Wayne County (basically Detroit) where almost the same number of voters showed up. Biden was +332k last time. Harris is +250k this time. My county voted almost exactly the same in 2020 and 2024 (almost 75% Blue each time).
