Hi, I'm Bill Crystal.

Welcome back to conversations.

And welcome back to my friend Ron Brownstein, who we've had a few of these

conversations, one, what, just two, three weeks ago. Yes. So we had an election here on Tuesday.

You're one of the leading, leading analysts of it. So analyze. What surprised you? What's most

notable? And it will go into all kinds of details. Well, I mean, to me, the most notable thing was the uniformity of what we saw.

I believe Trump improved his vote chair in 49 of the states.

The New York Times calculated that 90% of the counties in the U.S. moved toward him.

The Center for Rural Studies does one of my favorite geographic segmenting of the counties from the most urban to the most rural, and Trump improved between three and four points in all six of their groupings.

And, you know, I think that suggests to me that we were not looking at an election that was shaped by tactics or, you know,

message or the answer that Kamala Harris gave on the view about, you know, continuity with Biden.

It was a big shared national experience and a big shared national verdict of discontent and

disappointment in the outcomes that they had received

under the Biden administration. Obviously, Biden had a lot of successes legislatively and

otherwise, but for most Americans, inflation and secondarily the border, I think, maybe crime,

primarily inflation, overshadowed all of that and allowed Trump to basically gain

everywhere, overcoming all of the kind of castle keeps, the last lines of defense that Democrats

thought they had built in the swing states. So let's talk with the numbers for a second on the swing.

So I think the

California votes, we're speaking Friday morning, California vote, pretty good chunk,

but it's still outstanding. I think when you factor that, what do you think, Harris? Trump wins

the popular vote by 2.5 or so, maybe. I can't do the math in my head of what it's going to be.

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