Dem
47
GOP
53
G. Elliott Morris, a data journalist who runs the blog Strength In Numbers, has taken a closer look at the election data from last week and come to some interesting conclusions. He examined the vote in every county in Georgia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia and compared it to the 2024 presidential election. He then plotted the 2025 vote margin for the Democrats against the 2024 vote margin for the Democrats. This is what it looks like for the counties within the D-50 to D+50 margin. Each circle is one county:
The solid black line is the line y = x, meaning there was no change from 2024 to 2025. Almost all the circles are above the black line, meaning the Democratic margin in 2025 was bigger than in 2024—that is, a shift toward the Democrats in almost all the counties in four states. That cannot be due to good or bad candidates in some particular race. It can only be due to a widespread popularity of the Democratic Party or a widespread dislike of the Republican Party (with the latter more likely).
The amount of shift varied by state. It was biggest in Georgia, next in Pennsylvania, then Virginia and finally New Jersey. What is noteworthy is that the shift was present in very red counties (far left of the graph), neutral counties (in the middle of the graph) and very blue counties (far right of the graph). This means that both Republican counties and Democratic counties moved to the left, across the board. This should be a warning to Republicans that unless they make some big changes, 2026 is probably not going to be a fun year for them. (V)