| Ian Crouch
Newsletter editor  Photograph by Charly Triballeau / AFP / Getty “What a night in America. A long, long night,” Vinson Cunningham wrote, as what seemed set to be a tight contest between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris rapidly revealed itself to be a dominant victory for the former President and his fellow-Republicans. As results came in, our writers tried to make sense of what was happening, and predict what might be yet to come. How had so many election analysts misjudged Trump’s popularity? As Isaac Chotiner explained, “polls appear to have been more accurate than they were in 2016, and especially more accurate than they were in 2020. Still, they underestimated Trump’s support.” Trump’s posturing, as much as his economic promises, seemed to break through in a major way. “When people are alienated, and still clawing their way back from the COVID era (a period that clearly deserves more political analysis than it has received), the most comforting solution, for many, turned out to be snarling strength,” Evan Osnos noted. The Democrats, he added, face a chasm ahead: “One thing we can say for sure: the Democratic Party will not be the same a year from now.” Harris’s fund-raising and ground game had earned wide coverage ahead of the election, while Trump’s preparations appeared haphazard. Yet it was his voters who surged. “One thing I’m thinking about,” Cunningham wrote, “is whether this election foretells a radical shift in campaign tactics, away from the ‘ground’ and even more ardently toward the Internet and whatever it is we mean when we say ‘television’ now.” In other words, he asked, “Are podcasts and social feeds and Twitch broadcasts the political battlegrounds of the next few decades?” As for what else the future of politics might look like, the elevation of tech leaders—notably Elon Musk, the billionaire in Trump’s orbit who could play a role in the future Administration—will set the country on an uncharted path. “Whatever role Musk wants to play in the years to come, we’ve never had an oligarchic arrangement like this,” Osnos wrote. “Not only his wealth but also a social-media machine at his disposal, and now, it seems, a direct line to the world’s most powerful military. The mind reels.” Thinking about the larger question of the coming Administration, the scope of the threat stretches to the existential. “We can look forward to the next four years with a lot of worry,” Benjamin Wallace-Wells wrote of the coming Trump Presidency. “His party will be unified behind him, and the guardrails will be off.” Read more from last night’s coverage: • Good and Bad News for Democrats in New York
• Minimal Disruptions Despite Russian Bomb Threats
• Florida’s Abortion-Rights Ballot Initiative Fails | 
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