Welcome to the final edition of the Horse Race newsletter. Thanks for following along with us as we've charted the ups and downs of a wild presidential election.
West Palm Beach, Fla. — Even before the clock struck midnight Wednesday morning, the Democratic Party's meltdown had already begun as dejected Kamala Harris supporters began streaming out of her election watch party in anticipation of an all but inevitable loss.
A few hundred miles away here in West Palm Beach, some of Trump's strongest supporters were already having a ball telling National Review about the Democratic ticket's biggest campaign blunders as election returns rolled in. It remains to be seen which explanation will crystallize as the prime mover in the minds of Democrats, and there will certainly be many contenders for the top spot.
For Senator Markwayne Mullin late Tuesday evening, the writing on the wall came when Harris, asked on The View what she might've done differently from her boss, responded: "There is not a thing that comes to mind." For Trump adviser Brian Hughes, her biggest misstep was twofold: "Not telling Joe a year earlier that he was cooked and had to go, allowing them a primary process," and "fast-tracking Harris with an authoritarian process, a wholly unqualified and unserious person."
And for Trump pollster John McLaughlin, three simple words came to mind: "Their failed policies."
In the coming days and weeks, Democrats will surely uncover a number of factors that added up to a disappointing loss for Harris — but one of the most obvious answers to emerge so far has concerned the vice president's underperformance among Latino voters.
Some of Harris's most disappointing results of the night came from several Texas border counties where more than five in six residents are Hispanic: the numbers there encapsulated the Hispanic shift toward Trump.
Starr County flipped red for the first time in 132 years. In Webb County, Harris received a portion of the vote 13 percentage points lower than Biden's in 2020. She ran ten points behind Biden in Dimmit and nine points behind him in Zapata. Senator Ted Cruz, who easily won his own reelection bid in the state, said the change in South Texas "should shake the Democrat establishment to its core."
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