Anatomy of a swing state

It's been one week since Election Day, but it will be weeks or months before we have a full picture of how and why Americans voted the way they did.

Right now, we know one thing for sure: The politics of the most powerful country in the world have lurched sharply to the right, Axios' Zachary Basu reported.

Why it matters: In almost every state, President-elect Trump defied all odds in building on his 2020 margins and assembling the most diverse GOP coalition in decades.

• 71% of states shifted more Republican in the 2024 election compared to 2016 when Trump first won, per an Axios analysis of AP election data.
• That's true in North Carolina, too.

Zoom in: What seems to be unique about this state, however, is just how decisively Trump won.

Flashback: Trump's margin of victory shrank between 2016 and 2020. He won by just over 173,000 votes in 2016 and fewer than 75,000 in 2020 — a change many attributed to the rapidly changing demographics of our state.

• Our booming urban areas and suburbs looked like they might push the state further left this year — or perhaps even deliver the state to a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time since 2008.

That's not what happened, obviously. Instead, Trump's support grew in North Carolina. He won by 190,000 votes, the latest numbers show, a win so solid that our state was the first battleground to be called on election night.

• We're dedicating today's newsletter to showing you how that happened, through several charts and a glimpse into where and who the North Carolina voters are who supported Trump.

Zoom out: Let's begin with a look at how the battleground states shifted right.

• That's right: Every single one.
• North Carolina didn't have the biggest swing, by any means — that was Arizona — but it did deliver Trump a margin of victory greater than some of the other swing states.

One of the most telling charts we've seen is from Axios' Erin Davis, who put together a stunning visualization of how each North Carolina county has shifted in the last eight years.

Can you guess which county is the furthest right on the below chart?

It's Robeson, one of the most diverse counties in the country. Once a Democratic stronghold, Robeson is home to the Lumbee Tribe, a 27% poverty rate and a coalition of voters that has been persuaded to vote red by the promises of the GOP.

• "The Democrats are not for us; all they want is our votes. They don't want to change nothing," one resident told journalists at the Border Belt Independent and The News & Observer.

Here's another way of looking at that same data:

As you may already know, North Carolina is notorious for being a split-ticket state.

• That was especially true this year, with the Republican nominee for governor, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, running an astonishing 18 points behind Trump, per the latest numbers.
• Here are some of the others where voters cast bipartisan ballots: