My Visualization of the Cosmic All is simply not: it crashes, reboots, and then crashes again whenever I try to contemplate the 2024 next to the 2026 American electoral map.
The Republican floor is still 13/28 of the electorate: older, whiter, rural, and “evangelical” (and profoundly unChristian, if I may say so). It splits roughly in half between self-described MAGA voters and party loyalists who say Trump wasn't a factor in their vote. Four-fifths say high prices aren't Trump's doing. Few report feeling under affordability pressure. And for three hours last night Fox News viewers kept thinking that the vote was going to be D+5 rather than D+13 because that is what they were told. Mostly, the Republican floor simply inhabits a different and non-factual world.
A move from R+1 in 2024 to D+13 in 2026 means only one voter in fourteen chose differently. Only 40% of that was conversion, and half of that was of people who say they dislike both parties. 60% was turnout.
The move came because of prices, corruption, and checks-and-balances. 3/5 of voters:
call corruption “crucial”,
want congress to check the president,
blame high prices on Trump's policies, with tariffs hurting the economy and the Iran war being a mistake.
Gas and diesel prices worry everyone.
We have:
What were the regions that swung Republican, and why? God knows what that Oregon red arrow is: I cannot figure it out: I conclude it is an early-data error. NY-12 (Manhattan) shifted 7.7%-points toward Republicans as Democrat Micah Lasher leads Republican Caroline Shinkle by only 77.2% to 20.0% in this election. South Dakota now looks like it moved toward the Democrats, but only by 1.9%-points (and Republican candidate Marty Jackley is, I am told, the well-regarded state attorney general). And the two midwestern arrows are also early-data errors.
At 6:50 pm pst on November 3, my daughter texted:
What did I miss?
I went to the gym and so only watched Fox News.
Yet by then it had been clear for two hours and more that there was no substantial polling error undercounting Republicans: that instead of polls being D+9 in a D+5 electorate polls were D+9 in a D+13 electorate. And yet Fox News (and Twitter) watchers were not aware of that fact.
Why the 1/14, and how did we get there? There were people who switched, people who voted for Trumplicans in 2024 who stayed home, and people who voted against Trumplicans in 2026 who did not show up in 2024, and the very large supermajority of the electorate who simply marked the same checkboxes.
Indeed, that is very important. The exit polls say that only about 1/33 of 2026 voters were Trump 2024 voters who backed a Democrat for the House, and about 1/100 went the other way. By contrast, the 2026 electorate who claim they voted in 2024 claimed that they voted Harris +3 in a country that went Trump +1.5. That doesn’t mean that they are telling the truth, or remembering correctly. But it is a straw.
Then you need to add in the first-time and lapsed voters breaking about 69–25 Democratic. The gains were largest among the groups Trump “borrowed” in 2024:
under-30s,
Latino men,
Asian-Americans,
Catholics,
independents,
low-income voters.
Their reason was the one they gave in 2024: prices. AP’s poll says: voters blamed Trump’s policies by name:
**62%**saying high prices were mostly Trump’s doing, and they went D 83–15.**65%**said tariffs hurt the economy.**65%**said Trump’s policies worsened the economy. Only 27% said they improved it.**63%**called the Iran war the wrong decision. 74% said the war was a crucial or major factor, and they went D 63–35.**87%**were concerned and 59% very concerned about gas and diesel prices, and they went D 65–33.**54%**said Trump policies raised their healthcare costs.
Moreover, 54% of voters called corruption “crucial”, and went D 62–36.
**62%**saying Trump puts his own interests first, going D 85–12.**71%**including 2/5 of Republicans said Congress is not doing enough to check Trump.
But:
while
**60%**disapprove of ICE, and 57% say immigration enforcement has “gone too far”, even so Republicans still led on handling immigration 44–41. Immigration held the GOP floor together.**15%**disliked both parties, and went D 59-34. This time.**38%**viewed the Democratic Party unfavorably and the Republican Party favorably.AP reports voters choosing “needed change” over “right experience”.
The Republican floor, the 13/28, lives in a different factual world. 80% say high prices aren't Trump's doing.
My map of the electorate has divided it male-female, white-Black, nonHispanic-Hispanic, rich-poor, uneducated-educated, and southernrural-northernurban, viewing those as six largely-independent axes. That is itself much too complex. But even that is, I think, not adequate for me to understand what is going on.
But it did matter. For the 1/14—which consist of 1/40 Harris 2024 voters showing up and Trump 2024 voters not, 1/40 switchers, and the rest new and lapsed voters—are enough to mean that while in 2024 the Baddies won, in 2026 the Baddies lost.
Thus we have:
Abdul Al-Sayed: <[https://twitter.com/KaivanShroff/status/2117902502502846541]>: ‘To all the parents who struggled to explain to their kids why the president openly mocks someone for their name or how they pray, let them know tomorrow that the bad guys lost…
Of course, that being Twitter, immediately below it—even in my Twitter feed carefully curated to show, overwhelmingly, rainbows and puppies and unicorns—we have this hive of scum and villainy:
And these are going to change, as they have not yet been properly reweighted:
##public-reason
##neofascism
##dodged-of-the-day
#well-that-was-a-thing
#midterms-2026
#blue-tsunami
#exit-polls
#anti-trump-majority
#cost-of-living
#tariffs
#iran-war
#gas-prices
#government-corruption
#checks-and-balances
#fox-news-bubble
