The Big (State) Picture

Though she went to high school in Canada, Kamala Harris often describes herself as a daughter of Oakland. Berkeley, where she grew up, is a famously liberal enclave, and so one would expect that, on Tuesday night, the vice president would have racked up the kind of margin she enjoyed in Washington, D.C., where Donald Trump won just 7 percent of the vote. But she underperformed in her home county, Alameda, where Trump secured 25 percent of the vote, besting his performance there in 2020 (18 percent) and 2016 (15 percent). Trump’s showing was the best by a Republican presidential candidate in the county since George H. W. Bush got 34 percent of the vote in 1988.

Understandably, much media focus has centered on Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and other key swing states that formed the keys to Trump’s victory and Harris’s defeat. But the results in America’s four most populous states—California, Texas, Florida, and New York, none seriously in question on Election Night—merit attention, too, since they help explain Trump’s remarkable popular vote win.

Let’s start by acknowledging the obvious: if Trump had won the election but once again lost the popular vote, progressives would be talking about the supposed injustice of the Electoral College. Trump’s popular vote win spares us that melodrama. And it should prompt Democrats to look inward to understand their loss.

Media outlets have highlighted Trump’s performance in rural America, which he won by 30 points after winning by only 15 points four years ago. But Trump had won such areas by 27 points in 2016, despite losing that year’s popular vote by 2 percent. His performance was relatively steady in urban and suburban areas across 2020 and 2024, but in select areas within the largest states—particularly those with particularly high inflation or illegal immigration—it was much better.

New York. Trump performed far better in the New York metro area than he did in the last election--something of a miracle, given how many right-leaning New Yorkers moved elsewhere during the pandemic. Statewide, his share of the vote rose from 38 percent in 2020 to 44 percent this time out. Here are some counties where he improved his margin by at least 5 percent (2024 vs. 2020):

Queens County: 37 percent vs. 27 percent
Nassau County (Long Island): 52 percent vs. 45 percent
Suffolk County (Long Island): 56 percent vs. 49 percent
Kings County (Brooklyn): 28 percent vs. 22 percent
Richmond County (Staten Island): 65 percent vs. 57 percent
Bronx County: 27 percent vs. 16 percent
New York County (Manhattan): 17 percent vs. 12 percent
Westchester County: 36 percent vs. 31 percent

Some neighborhoods in Staten Island’s heavily Italian-American South Shore broke for Trump by close to 90 percent. He also rolled in the Jewish neighborhoods of Brooklyn this time—securing 95 percent to 98 percent of the vote in several precincts around Borough Park. (These areas broke decisively for Trump in 2020 and 2016, too, but generally by smaller margins.) Trump also carried several districts in the Bronx—AOC Country— including in Throggs Neck, Middletown, Pelham, and Morris Park. And he flipped a host of neighborhoods across Queens.

Harris likely struggled in the New York metro area for the same reasons she struggled elsewhere: inflation, the Biden administration’s underwhelming job-growth record, and her uber-progressive past, among other factors. The migrant crisis may have been a particularly decisive factor in New York City, partly because of Mayor Eric Adams’s candor in admitting that it had the potential to “destroy” the city. It’s one thing for voters to hear Republicans saying such things, quite another to hear them so unequivocally from a Democratic mayor of a deep-blue city.

Florida. Trump pushed his victorious margin in the Sunshine State from 3 points in 2020 to 13 points in 2024. (Remember George W. Bush’s 500-vote win in 2000 and Barack Obama’s Florida victories? Different times.) This year’s 10-point swing in Florida was Trump’s fourth-best improvement in any state, behind only New York and California and tied with Maryland. And, as county-level data make clear, this wasn’t just the result of Trump’s running up the score in the sticks. Consider Trump’s 2024 vs. 2020 numbers:

Miami–Dade County: 55 percent vs. 46 percent
Orange County (Orlando): 43 percent vs. 38 percent
Osceola County (Orlando area): 50 percent vs. 43 percent
Hillsborough County (Tampa): 51 percent vs. 46 percent
Pinellas County (St. Petersburg): 52 percent vs. 49 percent
Duval County (Jacksonville): 50 percent vs. 47 percent

Trump’s victory in Osceola—the only county in the United States with a plurality of Puerto Ricans, per Henry Olsen—is particularly noteworthy, given the media’s fervent hope that a Trump-supporting comedian’s joke about Puerto Rico would swing the election. His win in Miami–Dade was historic: Trump was the first Republican presidential candidate to win the county in 36 years, when it was far less Latino than today. Trump prevailed in Miami–Dade, despite registered Democrats outnumbering registered Republicans in the county, 519,517 to 475,443.

Trump’s Florida numbers were so good that they inspired MSNBC’s Joy Reid to claim that the state had descended into an “extremist right-wing, fascist-type government.” That’s ironic; I live in Florida, and the reason many right-leaning people moved here during the pandemic was because their state Democratic leaders were behaving like extremists, imposing mask and vaccine mandates and business closures. In any case, the Sunshine State has proven an increasingly reliable venue for Republican candidates.

California. Harris was expected to put up massive numbers in the Golden State, but she underperformed widely, and not just in her home county. Biden captured 63.5 percent of the vote in 2020. With 58 percent of the vote counted (and 100 percent in some places, like Alameda County), Harris is currently running nearly six points behind Biden’s margin, with 57.6 percent of the vote. In San Francisco, she’s running 5 points behind the 85 percent mark captured by both Biden and Hillary Clinton. In fact, if her skimpy (by Bay Area standards) 80 percent margin holds, it will be the worst performance by a Democratic presidential candidate in San Francisco since Al Gore got “just” 75 percent of the vote in 2000.

Harris isn’t faring any better in Los Angeles (63.7 percent vs. 71 percent for Biden), Santa Clara County (San Jose—67.5 percent vs. 72.6 percent for Biden) or San Diego (55.9 percent vs. 60.2 percent). Trump is also winning in Fresno by 8.5 points after losing it by about the same margin in 2020. With nearly 70 percent of the vote in, Trump also holds a narrow lead in Orange County, south of Los Angeles. He lost there by about 9 points in both 2020 and 2016.

Texas. With 99 percent of the vote in, Trump crushed Harris in the Lone Star state by about 14 points, compared with a narrower 6-point win in 2020 and a 9-point win in 2016. It’s the best showing for a Republican in the state since Mitt Romney took 57 percent in 2012. Biden won Houston (Harris County) by 13 points; Harris took it by only 5. In Beto O'Rourke's heavily Latino El Paso, Biden was +35 in 2020, and Clinton was +48; Harris won by only 15. But the most striking results were in the heavily Latino Rio Grande Valley, where Trump ran the table—even in Starr County, which, at roughly 97 percent Hispanic, is the nation’s most Latino county.

As you ponder the 89-point swing in Starr County and the 45-point swing in Hidalgo and all the rest, remember that, during the Obama era, many Republicans believed that the way to woo Hispanic voters was to offer a massive amnesty for illegal immigrants or, at the very least, start parroting the Left’s euphemisms about “undocumented migrants” and such. In light of these results, only a fool in either party would still believe that Latinos want an open border.

Support for progressive immigration policies doubtless remains strong in affluent enclaves like Nantucket and Bethesda, Maryland, and Silicon Valley. Migrants in those places mean more ethnic restaurants and a wider availability of lawn and pool boys, nannies, and maids, not to mention incremental opportunities to virtue-signal about how no human is illegal and the rest of the progressive catechism. But elsewhere, it’s a different story. In the Rio Grande Valley—and now, thanks to Governor Greg Abbott’s migrant busing scheme, in big cities around the country—more people are feeling the impact of the migrant crisis. Latinos living along the border, in particular, understand that the newcomers affect their employment prospects and wage growth, the cost of housing, the quality of their schools, and much more.

Though they didn’t figure in any Election Night cliffhangers, America’s biggest states helped to fuel Trump’s decisive victory and popular vote win. Now, the onus is on the president-elect and the rest of the GOP to ensure that the 2024 election was the start of a trend, and not an aberration.

Photo by Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images