The News
It’s easy to understand why Republicans couldn’t imagine the Trump coalition cracking. The MAGA electoral map, first built in 2016, stayed mostly intact for eight years and five elections. Rural areas stayed red or got redder. Non-white, working class areas drifted away from Democrats. The party of the New Deal was reduced to an urban and suburban archipelago, blue smudges on a red map that the president liked to show off to White House visitors.
One good thing about America’s languid vote count is that a more interesting picture fills in after the big story is over. We knew last week that the Trump coalition came apart, and we’re learning now that Democrats won the country by 14 points, in the average House vote.
Republicans couldn’t imagine that shift before Tuesday. Obviously, they didn’t plan for it when they heeded the president, in deep red states, and re-drew congressional maps. They planned for at least another decade of the Trump coalition, with rural America locked up, suburban America still competitive, and non-white voters alienated from the “woke” opposition party.
Gerrymander hubris
The story of North Carolina this year is the shattered GOP gerrymander — seven seats that backed Trump by double digits in 2024, then elected Democrats.
