While we’ve been driving ourselves to distraction with the distortion of the electoral maps, projecting the failure of our system of government in the specter of “tied” electoral contests in which the vote is thrown to the House of Representatives, rather than anyone having a vote, we as if realizing the real fears of disenfranchisement that are all too palpable in the current status quo. The possibilities of choosing a President in a polarized nation have led, not only to consecutive weeks of polling so closely within the margin of error to be set many to rip out their hair, but also inevitably ratcheting up the fears of violence–and violent confrontation–at the polls.
As if a concrete version of swinging, the fears of fists swinging at the polls seemed all too real, perhaps in the memory of January 6 still fresh in some minds, and the major actors, decentralized and all-male actors seeming to respond to Trump’s rhetoric, claiming that they would “show up” at the polls, as Ohio-based groups posted “the task is simply too important to trust to regular normies,” legal norms, or boards of election. All ratcheted up fears that the election would be stolen, amplifying anxieties about the authority or legitimacy of the election. by taunts that “FREE MEN DO NOT OBEY PUBLIC SERVANTS” on alt right social messaging platforms before Election Day. The Proud Boys, famous for having been told by Donald Trump in past Presidential debates to “stand down and stand by,” now stood “locked, loaded, and ready for treasonous voter fraud.” The demonization of public servants and the civil service, only to be amplified by the Trump White House in later months, was indeed launched within the election.
The feared violence did not happen, but a violent shock seemed present as votes were counted in a new electoral map, as the battleground states that had long been contested seem to have folded, and shifted red. But Trump’s ties to the Proud Boys–or the ties that were not only seen on January 6, but even back to the “stand down and stand by” remarks in the Clinton-Trump debate that curried so much favor with the radical alt right group. Indeed, they raise the question of whether, even if violence at the polls or voter intimidation did not occur, it still makes sense to map the electors in purely partisan terms, in this most polarized of ages, and how much that polarization rests on the personal power that Donald Trump has gained. But we have retained the map of “red” and “blue” states as a visual shorthand, dating twenty years ago on the television news, that has dominated our understanding of partisan divisions, and indeed been naturalized as a shorthand of political brand, able to take the metaphorical temperature of the nation and “decide” its leadership–even if the cartographic shorthand may be outdated in the era of the strongman. And we have forgotten how narrow the election was, as Trump has claimed a “mandate” while in fact loosing the popular vote, on the basis of winning six swing states–as if those close margins of victory, and a failure to gain a majority of the votes in what was for all practical purposes a two-candidate race, led to an electoral map that was rather divided–and offered little consensus–despite an illusion of a continuity of red states, rooted in the less educated and more economically disadvantaged ones, who bought Trump’s deceptive assurances of the arrival of lower prices on food and gas.
Have we allowed our minds–and our journalists’ minds–to become too filtered by the distorting principles of electoral maps? William Galston, an observer of elections and insider who worked for four presidential campaigns, ran with this cartographic metaphor, noting that if political parties had gained and lost ground in states and regions in earlier eras, we “live in an era of closely contested presidential elections without precedent in the past century.” As one candidate promises to divide us like we have never been divided, we are divided by the smallest of shifts in voting patterns, the electoral map of “the contemporary era resembles World War One, with a single, mostly immobile line of battle and endless trench warfare”–that reflect the increasingly and unprecedentedly sharp partisan tenor of our politics. Galston argued this was increasingly true in 2020, the election when states’ partisan opposition seemed to harden over forty years–if not sixty?–despite the interruptions of the Clinton and Obama years, the rare excerptions. But this divided landscape gained a terrifying sharpness that crystallized in how seven “battlegrounds” decided the election in 2024, justifying outsized attention from Presidential campaigns in the 2024 election.
Even as the United States Justice Dept. monitored twenty-seven states–and some eighty-six jurisdictions!–to ensure compliance with federal voting rights laws, prevent voter intimidation, and law enforcement agencies were braced for violence, no cases occurred–despite tangible fears of violence or intimidation. But the shock of the red map lead to existential worries of a story that ended in the wrong way. If 77,000 votes from Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania put Trump in the White House the first time, in 2016, a big push from all three states did the trick by promises to a Christian Right. Even if Harris cut Trump’s lead in the battleground states, Trump continued his advantage in battlegrounds of the light blue Democratic victories of 2020. And so the first returns in the Election Day scenario of the 2024 suggested a shift in the landscape rightwards, a mass shift Trumpwards, in fact, that had not been seen before, a shift in collective action and identity voters adopted en masse–as if rejecting partisan allegiances to run against the polarization of the past–
CBS News/November 7, 2024
–that provided a new landscape by the evening of November 7 of increased margins of victory from 5% to as much as 20% among for the party that had undeniably become, as many fretted, the Party of Trump, in ways that tested the carving up of the electorate into demographic groups or genders.
The array of arrows lurching red seemed to blanket the nation appeared nothing less than a major electoral paradigms. And the victory of Trump was not a victory of the GOP, but a confirmation, in some sense, of the full takeover of the Republican Party by Trump’s promises of making things right again, promises that seemed more concrete in its details–even if they were largely vague assurances, moral victories of slim benefit like the restoration of values and end of access to abortion–promises at well in exurbs, far from cities and urban disturbances, from private equity to prisons to gaming to casinos to gun advocates, finding a gospel of mall government and low taxes, a salve to anger at pandemic restrictions, an exurbia on the edges of cities, fleeing all disturbances to an elusive status quo, believing hopes of bracketing costs of global warming and near gaining a critique of Trump’s abundant lack of any actual economic plans.
CNN, November 7, 2024
The sudden parsing of the flow of margins erased the red state-blue state electoral map, with a precinct- or county-based tally of margins from the previous election, seeking to size up candidates by socioeconomic or other groups, but confronting an apparent large-scale shift of the electorate. Trump’s victory was not overwhelming in its margins, but re-mapped most large stretches of the country red left the notion of “red” states in the past, to augur a new landscape for the United States–not only in domestic policies, but, of course, its relations to the wider world. But it was more than decisive, and the “break” in many districts once dependably mapped as Democratic voters to Republican suggested a wake-up call, even if the election was by no means a landslide: it felt like one, and that nagged one’s mind and would in days to come. And, perhaps more importantly, the perception of a landslide–even if it was by small margins–was exultantly viewed as a license to remake the government, remake the presidency, and redefine the role of government.
The bitter truth Trump did well among, non white voters, lower-income Americans, and women cannot be explained easily, and surely not by class-based disaffection from Democratic candidates.
Red Shift across American Landscape Showed a Decrease in but 240 Political Counties/New York Times
Despite fears of violence, the eery absence of any disturbances paralleled the rightward swing of the American electorate, evident in the rightward swing of voters not only in those seven “swing states” but the great majority of counties across the nation evident as the first votes were tabulated on election night. This was a punch to the right, a lurch right save spots in Georgia, South Carolina and Michigan–once considered swing states, to be sure, but now trending red. How did all the so-called “swing states,” uncertain in their voting practices but which we had been reminded from the summer, would, in fact, be selecting the President as much as the country, swing red in ways that seemed more overdetermined than seeming news?
The map hit viewers like a slap in the face, a rude awakening of heart-breaking disconnect with America, but was also cause for a recognition of deep-lying and relatively dark undercurrents that found grounds to turn away from a convincing female candidate, even in favor of a convicted felon. The bomb threats on election across swing states provoked fears of a conspiracy of Russian origins, but the lurch seemed terrifyingly home-grown and domestic, and seemed profound. It was only as more votes came in, early results revealed a shift of over 90% toward Donald Trump, a terrifying landscape indeed, but as the votes continued to be tabulated nationwide, the electoral map and the tally of votes suggested a narrow victory, in many senses, as more votes came in from California–but revealed the stubborn draw of this year’s Republican candidate, former President Donald Trump, who attracted voters across many of the states once thought in play. Candidate Trump currently only leads the vote count by 2.5 million votes nationwide, but the large turnout paradoxically benefitted him, suggested the special draw that he had as a candidate among many voters, from a far more “diverse” background than Republicans had indeed ever assembled.
Cook’s Political Report/2024 U.S. Presidential Election
The light pink areas that were not so dominated by Republican voters presented a fractured landscape that broke the wrong way, and did so by small margins and very much perhaps for not the right reasons. But the break in votes was striking, as if able to be mapped as continuous regions. We are still haunted and traumatized by the mapping of the way the national population had split in 2016,–of siloed blue towers, removed from he rest of the land, a hived off vision of politics that we faced with frustration as Trump entered the White House for the first time–winning the backing of the interior forty-eight with an intensity not reflected in any earlier polls.
Three-Dimensional Map of 2016 United States Presidential Election at County Level Light to Dark Red and Blue Showing Democratic and Republican Votes and Voting Density
We had pored over those maps that haunted our minds with endless precision as data arrived on county and district level, to search for signs of the anatomy of the loss, hoping to grasp the gaping division of the national vote. Did Trump’s continued appeal redraw the political landscape, or was there something wrong baked into aggregating the general will? Did tailored talking points about access to abortion and an attack on price-gouging fail to motivate voters, or provide a convincing narrative of steering a more vital economy, or at least a convincing trust in the law?
Or, the voting map almost seems to beg the question, were we relying on the wrong maps as we focus on electoral maps, and ceaselessly made new maps for electoral prediction, seeking to craft multiple scenarios for how electoral votes would fall out this time, scenarios whose endless proliferation seemed a suspension of agency? The real maps of the election lie far outside demographic metrics not mapped by demographics or class or race or gender divides, but a space of a lost community, where the battle cry to Make America Great Again exercised undeniable appeal.
The massive scale of the red shift evident by the morning after Election Day was a wake-up call that suggested a changed landscape. The red arrows lurching right seemed evidence of a disconnect of Democratic campaigns and candidates that provoked an immediate introspection and conveyed the shock many felt in he nation. Amazingly, rather than the election being close in any way, it seemed, the election that was long said to come down to thin margins of voters, per the polls, were upended. Trump’s margins built on 2020 and significantly grew in 2,367 counties nationwide. The red arrows overwhelmed any of the fears of heightened violence in Trump’s political rhetoric elected, with the demonization of opponents, or indeed just suggested they were meaningful rallying cries far more successful than polls had showed or political junkies had expected.
Voting had come off without any real violence, or disruptive incidents, save that threats of vigilante groups would be vigilant poll-watchers, with American Civil Liberties Union poll watchers but with, we feared, far less regard for voters’ civil liberties. But the rightward shift almost across the nation, was almost an assault that made you feel distant from the rest of the nation. It seemed right, all of a sudden, that the sense of anger and resentment that much of America was feeling was being expressed, and measured, by red arrows or spears, as if a state of nature had descended. Or the messaging that was honed, especially the message of the fears of a second Trump presidency, had been roundly rebuffed. If the rage of red arrows seemingly clusters in counties from the Midwest to Applachai to the south was rooted in resentment, one had to wonder, how angry was it?
New York Times, “Early Results Show a Red Shift across the Nation“/November 6, 2024
Or maybe that was the wrong question. The rightward shift was, if anything was in this election, suddenly real as this graphic made the rounds. What did it mean? The scale of the shift rightward was a slap in the face. It resisted being reduced to statistical explanations, in the manner of the “red mirage” which resulted form the different speed and manner of ballot counting across space that give Republican votes that tend to be counted by rural precincts first, due to delays counting votes in crowded cities, tone followed by a “blue shift”–this was apparently a decisive shift to the right by which we were stunned and demanded explanations. The early votes were here an anticipation of the deep red shift in a political landscape we seemed resigned to give Donald Trump agency, or allow him to exercise attraction as if this constituted a changed political climate overnight.
This time, the Republicans who seem to have abandoned Trump in 2020 seem to have rejoined him in full force. The map was not an image of partisan divisions, but of a nation turning Trumpward. It used the colors of the visual shorthand that the late jovial journalist Tim Russert presented in 2000, of white board fame; despite his acknowledged influence on Meet the Press, Russert would be quite surprised that what was born as an explanatory tool he improvised on dry erase board in 2000 would become an authoritative visual shorthand able to naturalize partisan divides in America.
NBC-TV Election Night Map, 2000
Of course, the media verse had considerably evolved since 2000–with increased newsfeeds, online forums, and far less to smile about in the heightened partisan divides, both of self-segregating communities and that lead to disillusionment with democracy and voting. But heightened partisan divides became naturalized as the opposed ends of a color spectrum, as gerrymandered maps lead to increased dominance of one party and intense polarization. A rejection of wars, a return to getting our grievances, and a hope for authority in a globalized world were all reasons for the shift, and the portrayal of the Democratic candidates as unequipped to deal with issues–migration, crime, the economy–helped. Of course, the focus on this image of the lower forty-eight as an integral unit of focus was neatly isolated from the rest of the world, but the sense it had firm borders–thickly drawn white lines, above, represented by credible white men–helped.
The map of blue and red states were the only colors that were left, it seemed, of the peacock’s tail of color television that NBC had long ago championed as a marketing tool back in May, 1956, to champion the first color broadcasts on television, were now the only colors we could see, and we were impoverished for it. The dichotomy was the withered talisman of the rainbow-colored peacock’s tail of the NBC network logo, of saturated hues of color television, that seemed to be truly drained by the lurch of red arrows that only affirmed the profound disorientation of much of the American electorate to the rest of the world–or issues of global consequence, from wars in Ukraine or the Middle East to issues of climate change few ever really addressed in most recent election, long acknowledged to be outside voters’ attention spans..
If Russert’s whiteboard became a stable signifier in the age of television journalism, the dynamic map of the sudden jerk or lurch of counties by so many red arrows in the 2024 election replaced or erased the static image of a red and blue state divide in decisive ways, tracking a shift in the nation’s political fabric. Some long, red arrows at the nation’s southern border mapped a Republican shift, but the onslaught of arrows across the nation aggregated voters’ changes from 2020 to 2024 so aggressively to map a resurrection of the Trump’s movement driven by shifts of political mood driven by an undercurrent of deep dissatisfaction or return of repressed grievances.
“Early Results Show a Red Shift across the Nation,” New York Times, November 6, 2024 (detail)
The colors were increasingly seen as a naturalized part of the landscape, and indeed a characteristic of states. That had a lot to do with the lasting effects of the electoral maps increasingly imprinted on our consciousness. Johann Wolfgang Goethe famously observed colors represent “primordial relations which belong both to nature and the organ of reason, . . . [that] may be made use of as a language,” and the language of electoral maps were clearly “purposed to express similar primordial relations which do not present themselves the the senses,” as they were used predict a “red wave” across the electoral map in the 2018 and 2022 midterms. B ut the current red storm was more than an illusory red tide, or even a red wave, but a “real” sea change, and a shift we didn’t see coming. But despite the close contest that most polls–and internal partisan polling–predicted, the map was perhaps not so much of a surprise, given the sizable leads Trump held for much of the year–
Aggregation of 349 Polls for General Election/The Hill
Yet the visualization depicted a shift that seemed to many, and not only readers of the New York Times who had warned us, too late for many, about the dangers of a Trump Presidency, a slap in the face. The tilt of those red arrows from across the nation was not only a rejection of Harris’ optimistic agenda, a campaign whose sails seemed confidently to ride the winds of feminism, but a flint toward the Donald’s dangerous demonization of migrants and immigration as a fear that “When you let 25 million illegal aliens…when you let those folks in your country at the level,” J.D. Vance set to trigger fight-or-flight alarms, “. . . you got to put them somewhere . . and that means those are homes that aren’t going to American citizens. That’s going to drive the cost of housing through the roof too.“
An emphasis on abortion rights did not ever gain currency in agrarian states or the “flyover” zone of red states, or in most of the nation we were shattered to discover. Far from it. Indeed, the imagined earthquake in rejection of a style of powerful political campaigning seemed to have backfired in ways not seen in fifty years, as if a sudden resistance to electing a woman arrived. Was it ever really mentioned that abortion rights were fundamental to health care? Abandoning tempting if questionably useful cartographic metaphors of a political landscapes or terrains, the country didn’t want her, in ways that register less a snapshot of polling preferences but a deep historical riptide, or ebb tide, moving away from the hopeful feminism that had inspired the campaign of an earlier predecessor, the first black woman to run for the American Presidency, in 1972, Shirley Chisholm, a race that led to the last major switch in the electorate for Richard Nixon.
That campaign didn’t turn out so well for its victor, of course, in the end. But if Shirley Chisholm was in the primary–not the general election–in 1972, the racist taunts that Chisholm had to stand down and transcends in 1972 were, about a generation or two later, enmeshed in deep debates about the role of Affirmative Action, DEI initiatives, and an explosion of anger for “reverse discrimination” that made Harris’ race a salient, but indeed ever-present part of the race. The energy of Chisholm’s audacious trial-balloon-candidacy was lifted on victories of the civil rights movement, claiming equal ground and equal rights, challenging voters and offering uplift, the narrative made les sense in 2024, as voters were needing to confront fears and deep distrust at the deal that they had been dealt. If, in the Supreme Court ruling for desegregation, “the unsuspecting nation may have been dealt a trial balloon,” in fact ” relatively safe one,” Zora Neale Hurston wrote, about “a matter not likely to arouse other sections of the nation to the support of the South,” that may well set an important precedent, the efforts of reintegration might be better spent, she felt, enforcing compulsory education, and indeed addressing the needs for reeducation, rather than bemoaning the poor state of segregated schools and schooling. For Hurston’s all too prescient call for “ethical and cultural desegregation” fell on deaf ears in 1955, during the ending of segregation at public schools in southern states, as the demand for segregation of rights, ending affirmative action, and denying of immigrant rights offered a road to the White House.
Education about race, and about the role of government in creating a more equal society, for that matter, had been allowed to fester as deep anger that only fostered over two generations. And if Harris hoped quite intentionally to be able to acknowledge a righting of that historic campaign, a historical reckoning culminating in a victory celebration held at Howard University, the HBUC she attended, to celebrate a deep belief in the power of education and social change, the defeat she had to confront revealed the deep standing failure of education in America, or education to be able to think about the future. Harris For seemed soundly defeated by a man who promised to end of the U.S. Department of Education, to roll back Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies, even if these policies’ mandates had been by now internalized and institutionalized, where they might succeed, and effect an end of Affirmative Action and to right reverse discrimination. Her candidacy was defeated by a man who routinely dished out demeaning sexism, racism and misogyny Chisholm had faced back in 1972, forcing her to acknowledge “being black is an inherent handicap in the United States because racism has been [so] very inherent in [our] institutions” even as he questioned her own “blackness” and the racial identity she was raised in, in order to draw attention to unleash accusations that she be umasked as a “DEI Vice President,” “DEI Candidate” or a “DEI Hire” by a man who rose to fame in the public arena after he claimed Barack Obama was unqualified to be President due to his birthplace, with the unmistakable implication that the “job” is for a white man, even if he argued “she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black” as if it were a brand–and casting her as a grasping individual seeking undue advantage, and using DEI as more than a slur but a dog whistle that erased her obvious qualifications.
The slap that is implicit in that graphic was one rooted in the continued relevance racism and sexism seemed to have across much of the nation, and was a slap of an undertow Harris’ candidacy continued to face, perhaps rooted in the rejection of rights of access to abortion her campaign so strongly reaffirmed. If the American people might have been able to imagine a black woman as Vice President, the Presidential office seemed far out of reach for many to a woman, if she might be elected in the blue state of California–even if she also ran by promising both moral uplift, independence, and a rhetoric of national unity. National unity, it may be, was rejected as a premise, as any notion of hope: the picture that was painted by the Republican opposition was far too grim to be reversed, as the specter of the border became accepted by many–even Democrats–as a disaster of political government, a disqualifying mistake, and sign of a weakness of the American people that had been allowed to come to pass. The border crossings of migrants became a new sign of good government, or a sign of the atrophied nature of good government in a logic where border protection was redefined as the ultimate essential task of government in a Schmittian vision of global politics that allowed only friend and enemy, that saw all politics as reducible to the an essential division between enemy and friend that demand the state responded to a deep dangers of a metaphors of evil. The border was a sign of the security that government could promise, for the jurist who disparaged liberal thought, and the crossing of the border by enemies was a brute fact that Harris had allowed to grow as the pandemic increased pressures on the border, an absent border policy failing to defend American homes and Americans’ safety Trump mobilized to distract voters from other issues that were on the line.
There was in the end no space, and no time for uplift or promise, or unity–but a time to press down on the border, and police the border, to keep out our enemies, in ways we were mercilessly reminded that, for all its promises, the Biden White House had failed to do. Growing “encounters” of border patrol with migrants had ballooned, approaching over 400,000, and the end was not in sight: as the political contest progressed, the migrant was successfully demonized as the root of all problems–from housing problems to gun safety to narcotics to crime–and the decision to end the “Remain in Mexico” policy under Trump or “zero tolerance” of accepting migrants or granting citizenship to the children born in America seemed to voters to make more common sense. Many lost sight of any other function that government might possibly have, deluded by the dangerous image, almost primal, of an “open border” that had been failed to be secured, as Trump played his central card successfully of a promise to close borders, as if this were possible in a globalized world. The “Biden-Harris administration” was shown as presiding over the greatest increase of border encounters, far beyond the regime of Obama or Trump, administrations in which no vice-president seems to have existed, as Kamala Harris, at a sharp dissonance with her upbeat message, was portrayed as ignoring the problems of the border, and masking them over with a cheerful smile. The deep betrayal of America First policies was evident in the apparent quadrupling of “illegal” immigrants encountered at the border with Biden as President, ignoring that the end of the “Remain in Mexico” program that Trump had inaugurated to stave off immigration across the border in his first term had left a build up exacerbated by economic crises and social instability in Central America to which the United States had no clear response or policy. The emphasis on border crossing as if immigration was an illegal act portrayed the Biden-Harris era as a betrayal, a flawed strategy that ignored basic needs of protecting Americans and American jobs, as if foolhardy absences of vigilance, and compromises with America’s security, were the state of play and name of the game for the Biden-Harris administration. It was as if all states were battleground states, as migrants were allowed to invade the nation and cross its borders, in an administration that had failed and deserved to be fired.
“Illegal” Immigration/America First Policy Institute
Although Harris was far more successful than Chisholm in attracting millions of American votes fifty years later, the fault lines around race grew in subtle ways that Harris had not intentionally evoked, but were evoked by her opponents–and often in the light of debates about the role of race in the nation’s history–and the critical revaluation of slavery’s centrality in American history that changed many state education standards, putting more focus on the arrival of slavery in the future United States in 1619, than its ideals of liberty–which Trump contested as President, and in promising to “end wokeness” promised to punish schools including the place of structural racism in curricula. Harris and her Vice President never referenced the centrality of slavery in American history or identity. For Harris decisively lost to candidates who styled themselves as the political versions of the southern comedy television show Dukes of Hazzard, as local champions, “fighting the system” like new “modern day Robin Hoods,” wielding a defense of values if not defending social security, health insurance, or social security in a year when book bans were front and center issues in many states.
The renegarde nature of the Trump/Vance ticket seemed to be boosted by the Appalachian aura that Vance had channeled, again casting Trump as a fellow redneck even if both were plutocrats determined to roll back corporate taxes, return to a regressive income tax code, and cut off Americans from their health care. The very issues that had been branded as ideological–abortion rights; trans rights; civil rights–were bundled together as radical, and cast as upsetting norms in dramatic ways. As book bans have gained increased intensity nationwide, it seems apt that the 1980s television comedy is the level of political literacy for which the Trump-Vance team reached–not the challenges to teaching about social justice issues or race relations in America.
Book Bans Introduced in Public Schools and Libraries, per State
The actual shift in margins was not particularly compelling, but in pockets of the nation we hadn’t considered much as central actors in the 2024 election–Florida counties, New Jersey, spots in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Arizona, and South Carolina, rather than Georgia, most all of Pennsylvania, or even most of Michigan, the shift in margins was not significant, but just enough. Wisconsin did not return to the Democrats but shaded even more republican, as was true of Georgia, and much of southern Nevada, counties that were often hard-red bastions of a new norm. Why? Anger was a reason, and the “red” states gained a new significance, as being angry at big government, angry at the imposition of laws, and angry at the world.
Bloomberg
Musings on Maps 
Thank you for your efforts to “map” what just happened to America. I have avoided the news since Tuesday evening when I realized what was about to occur. I hope once the dust settles a bit more you have an opportunity to have a followup that portrays the landscape in your unique and compelling fashion.
(‘Acaqun ehicine’) ‘Go in a good way’ as say the Cahuilla Indians.