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:

When it came to gender, President-elect Trump was courting men's votes, and Vice President Harris was courting women.

• But in every swing state, Trump ran up the margins with men more than Harris did with women, Axios' Erica Pandey writes.

Why it matters: That broad coalition of men of all ages, representing multiple racial and ethnic backgrounds, won Trump the election.

🖼️ The big picture: Trump has changed the calculus for young men who, for generations, were a core piece of the blue base, along with young women.

• The Trump campaign targeted that population for months through podcast appearances and an emphasis on macho masculinity.
• But no one, including the Trump campaign, was sure whether it would work. Exit polls suggest it did, with young men breaking hard for Trump, particularly in swing states.

One of the more surprising demographic shifts this cycle was a growth in Latino support for Trump, which echoes a long history of anti-immigrant sentiment among many Latino civil rights leaders, Axios' Russell Contreras writes.

• "Latinos were saying, 'I don't care what Trump says. I want to be able to pay the bills. I want to be able to send my kid to college. I want to pay the mortgage, to afford a new car,'" University of Houston political science professor Jeronimo Cortina tells Axios.

By the numbers: Harris won 52% of the Latino vote — tied for the worst performance by a Democrat since John Kerry in 2004, and well below the 64% share that Democratic candidates typically have needed in the past half-century to win the presidency.

🎥 A new PBS documentary airing tonight examines the history and impact of Wilmington's deadly 1898 coup, which ousted a multiracial local government and forever changed the demographics of the city. (Axios)

🚨 Raleigh police arrested a 23-year-old N.C. State student in connection with a dozen shootings along the I-40 corridor. (Axios)

Raleigh software firm ShareFile cut nearly 200 jobs days after being acquired by Progress Software Corp. (News & Observer 🔒)

A sign linked to the white nationalist hate group Patriot Front was removed Saturday from the American Tobacco Campus in Durham. (WRAL)

🎓 A $7 million loan that Raleigh's Saint Augustine's University used to re-open for the fall semester has a 26% interest rate and lists university property as collateral. (WRAL)

Once again, Mecklenburg County's turnout trailed Wake County's and the state's as a whole.

• It's leading to a reckoning inside the Mecklenburg County Democratic Party organization after it raised millions of dollars in a failing effort to boost turnout.