| This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a state-by-state rundown of Bloomberg Opinion's opinions. Sign up here. Good morning, and welcome to a special edition of this newsletter. Whether you're waking up feeling happy, sad, seen, ignored, hung over, clueless, sleep-deprived or a combination of those things, this one's for you. This morning, all of us brave souls still awake at 2:30 a.m. watched Donald Trump declare himself the 47th president of the United States. Call it the will of the voters, call it Trump's unusual traction with his supporters, call it surreal, call it a reckoning, call it whatever you want, but his victorious bro-fest on a stage in Florida doesn't begin to tell the whole story. Yes, he won the popular vote and at least 277 electoral votes, with more probably on the way. But what happened on the ground in each state? Why was Vice President Kamala Harris consistently behind President Joe Biden's margins in 2020? And what does Trump 2.0 mean for the economy? To find out, I emailed seven of our columnists, each of whom focused on a different state or market indicator, for their takes on the results as they came in. Florida Republicans on Tuesday demonstrated the power of minority rule. A decisive 57% of the state's voters approved an amendment to the state constitution that would end the six-week abortion ban signed into law by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis. Another 56% of voters approved an amendment to legalize recreational marijuana. But a majority vote wasn't enough — because Republican lawmakers in 2006 made sure that any citizen's initiative to change the constitution must get 60% of the vote to become law. DeSantis also took the unprecedented step of directing state agencies to use state tax dollars to defeat both measures. It worked. Trump is happy he didn't have to follow the 60% rule. He secured a whopping 30 electoral votes by outpacing Harris with 56% of the vote to her 43%. It's the largest margin in a presidential race since 1988: Republicans who fled to Florida during the pandemic have made the state solidly Republican, reducing Democrats to superminority status. Republicans retained their 20-8 majority in the congressional delegation and their supermajority in both the state House and Senate. — Mary Ellen Klas Most of the time, it's a good thing when hundreds of thousands of voters decide to cast their ballots early in an election as consequential as the one between Harris and Trump. But apparently not this time in Nevada. On Thursday, Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar got some laughs when he told reporters that elections officials had been forced to reject some 18,500 ballots, including some from younger voters who had turned out in droves and had printed their names in block letters on their ballot envelopes, rather than signing them in cursive. For ballots to be accepted, signatures must match those in the state's voter registration database. Is this what we get for no longer teaching cursive in schools? I jest. But in an election in which every vote counts, this is a serious problem. Voters have until Nov. 12 to fix — or "cure" — their ballots online. — Erika D. Smith  For Democrats, it was heartbreak again in Texas. Democratic Representative Colin Allred was trounced by Senator Ted Cruz, losing by a wider margin than polls forecast. Cruz, who won a third term, faced a stiff challenge in 2018, narrowly winning that race. Down the stretch, as polls showed a close race, Democrats put money into the contest, hoping Allred, a former NFL player and prolific fundraiser, could overcome Cruz. Harris even campaigned in Texas, spotlighting the state's strict abortion ban. Democrats, who ran a statewide coordinated campaign, hoped to improve among Latino voters, but Cruz did better among that demographic this year than he did in 2018, winning 52% of Latino voters, up from 35% in his last race. — Nia-Malika Henderson In closely divided Georgia, vote counting was delayed after a series of hoax bomb threats targeting polling locations in metro areas, a deliberate attempt to prevent people from casting ballots. The FBI identified them as originating from Russia, but with 97% of the vote in, Trump had a lead of almost 120,000 votes. That lead is a dramatic shift from 2020, when Biden won the state and its 16 electoral votes by 11,779 votes. Since then, new voters have arrived and the once-Republican state has become both politically and demographically more diverse in the expanding suburbs around Atlanta. As voters turned out in record numbers this year, Harris was hoping to run up the score. But while she appeared to be doing better among younger voters and women than Biden, Trump's edge came among non-White, rural and non-college voters. — Mary Ellen Klas Democrats never expected the "blue wall" to be easy for Harris to win, but as the night wore on it appeared to be slipping away, along with Harris' chances of reaching the needed 270 electoral votes. With 95% of the vote counted in all three states, Trump was winning Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — states crucial to Harris. Republican Senate candidates were also leading in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Exit polls in Michigan found that younger voters were tilting toward Trump due mainly to younger men. In Wisconsin one poll found he had doubled his support among Black voters, while another found Trump had made "double-digit gains" among Latino voters. Democrats had poured resources into traditional door-knocking, phone calls and neighbor-to-neighbor persuasion, convinced that these tactics would be their key to victory. When I traveled to Wisconsin, I visited with year-round volunteers who made two million calls and knocked one million doors over the last two weeks. Democrats will be re-examining their strategies for a long time to come. — Patricia Lopez To prevail, Harris had to win Pennsylvania — boosting turnout in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and increasing Democratic margins in the southeast suburbs to keep pace with Trump gains in rural counties and small cities. She was unable to do so, underperforming Biden's 2020 edge in nearly every county. Exit polls showed Trump eroding Democratic margins with Hispanic voters and making significant gains throughout the Northeast. Trump won 48% of the vote in New Hampshire and 47% in New Jersey, making even those states nearly competitive. — Francis Wilkinson The return of Trump to the White House is about to make the Federal Reserve's job much more complicated. Trump's proposals for aggressive tariffs on imports and large-scale deportations of undocumented immigrants introduce major uncertainty around the Fed's dual mandate of maximum employment and stable prices. Some observers think that Trump exaggerated the proposals on the campaign trail. But as of early Wednesday, markets weren't waiting to find out. Under an expected Trump presidency, Fed funds futures now suggest that the US central bank will only have room to cut rates four more times between now and the end of 2025 to 3.75%-4%. As recently as last month, trading suggested that the Fed would make seven cuts in the same period. — Jonathan Levin  If the bond vigilantes are ever going to stand up and be counted, it looks like their time is fast approaching. The immediate reaction to the US results saw the critical 10-year Treasury yield go through its biggest move since the crisis that engulfed the UK Prime Minister Liz Truss in 2022 — another example of bond markets revolting against what they saw as irresponsible fiscal policy. That also means a strong dollar, which is not what either Trump or the great majority of US trading partners wants at this point. Having apparently won over the electorate, the next challenge will be to conquer international bond and currency markets. — John Authers  In the wee hours of this morning, Trump told the crowd of jubilant supporters at Mar-a-Lago, "I'll never be doing a rally again, can you believe it?" Hearing him say this triggered something in me: I've never voted in a presidential election where Trump's name wasn't on the ballot. I know no political reality without this man in it. And there are plenty of people like me. Although the next four years will certainly have their moments of divisiveness — already, you can see pundits pointing fingers at each other, like that Spiderman meme — I am taking some small comfort in my colleague Frank Barry's "flour sack" ethos: There is a path to progress, and it does not involve any more insurrections. Also, not for nothing: Amid the red swings were glimpses of promise. In Delaware, Sarah McBride made history as the first transgender person elected to Congress. Two states elected a Black woman to the Senate for the first time. Four states voted to protect abortion access. And the election results aren't fully in yet — we're still waiting on the House. For that (and everything, really) you might want to heed Mary Ellen's advice: be patient. Notes: Please send cursive lessons, jello and feedback to Jessica Karl at jkarl9@bloomberg.net. Sign up here and follow us on Threads, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. | 
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