It's the Brian Laris Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. One of the unexpected results of the election

was how well Donald Trump did in New Jersey. He came within five points of Kamala Harris. In 2020,

Trump lost to Joe Biden by 16 points. Turnout was also lower this year. In 2020, four and a half

million people in New Jersey voted for president, four and a half million people. This year,

right around four million, a pretty astonishing,

half a million fewer voters, or more than a 10 percent decline, despite all the attention

and all the passions around this election. Another way to look at it, Donald Trump got basically

the same number of votes in New Jersey as he did in 2020, around 1.8 million,

that whole 500,000 drop off in voters came out of the Democrats column, at least in the

presidential race. Biden got around 2.6 million votes, Harris, around 2.1 million,

according to the various official statistics that I've seen reported by

the media. And New Jersey is pretty representative of what happened in many places in this election,

but in such a blue state, it led to this headline in Politico, New Jersey, said,

New Jersey might be a swing state now. We'll talk to the writer of

that article coming up and take your New Jersey calls. In contrast to Harris's five-point win in

the presidential race in New Jersey, though, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, Andy Kim,

beat his Republican opponent by nine points.

Kim got about the same number of votes as Harris,

but the Republican candidate, Curtis Bashaw, lagged Trump, by 400,000 votes. With us now is the brand new Democratic senator-elect from New Jersey,

Andy Kim.

He moves up from his seat in the House and also becomes the first

ever Korean American member of the United States Senate. Senator Elect Kim, thanks for making

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