The Emerging Picture…
By 
Object lesson on why we need to wait for results to cohere before forming the circular firing squad:
As Dan noted, this is pretty far from a landslide. The story of “15 million Democrats just didn’t show up” is clearly wrong, notwithstanding how things looked a few days ago. Overall turnout will be down slightly from 2020, but higher than any other Presidential election since the 1960s. Harris will drop about five million from Biden 2020, while Trump picks up about four million.
Obviously we’ll need to wait to get solid demographic numbers before coming to conclusions about where and how the election was lost, and how to rebuild a winning coalition for 2028. The issue definitely goes beyond “we just need to turn out our voters,” because in this election we saw not just a deterioration of our base but also a significant transfer of support to Trump. Moving forward it will be imperative to get some of those voters back (or at least to open a path for them to come back) as well as mobilizing turnout. I do find the fact of Harris’ competitiveness in swing states (where the campaign functioned at full tilt) at least a little bit reassuring; when the two campaigns clashed we did a little bit better than we should have, given the overall tilt.
By the way, before anyone here complains “I can’t believe you platformed Nate Silver,” let me say that I am absolutely finished paying attention to folks whingeing about who and what I cite in LGM posts. If you don’t want to click on a link from X, the Washington Post, or the New York Times, you are free not to click.