The American election is ripe for information overload. With dozens of states and thousands of counties, the story of the night can be told and retold in endless ways.

But it's the simplest number that best sums up Donald Trump's remarkable return to the presidency: 72 million Americans voted for him and 67 million voted for Kamala Harris.

That may not be the way presidents are elected — the labyrinthine Electoral College system means the national leader can and often does lose the election.

It's also not a final number, as votes still need to be counted in California, which will likely narrow but not eliminate Trump's lead.

But it's a remarkable result because it's something Republicans rarely win — Joe Biden beat Trump on that measure by millions of votes, as did Hillary Clinton, backed by massive majorities in populous states like California and New York.

Not this time.

The blue fades

In bluest New York, Biden's lead was cut in half in 2020. In California, the number is down 12 percentage points, with the important caveat that many mail-in votes skewed by Democrats have yet to be counted.

And even in Massachusetts and DC – the US equivalents of Melbourne and Canberra, as John Howard would put it – Trump won by eight and two points, respectively.

None of this refutes the conventional wisdom that the country is bitterly divided. Harris still won at least three-quarters of the vote in San Francisco, Manhattan and Boston.

But it is the “swing,” in Australian vernacular, that decides elections, and the swing to Trump was remarkably uniform. Only in conservative Utah and liberal Washington did Harris surpass Biden's lead by a few inches.

However, this is not necessarily a reflection of Harris herself – her position in opinion polls was stronger than Biden's before he dropped out of the race, and it left the unanswerable question of whether Biden might have lost even “safe” states like New Jersey if he would have remained the candidate.

What this means for the future is more concrete.

The polarized electoral map that characterized the Trump era saw a sea of ​​red in rural areas balanced by patches of blue in cities.

Winning key states like Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan came down to who could “win the election” in their respective turf and then win the balance in the more balanced suburbs.

This victory was different and shook the Democrats' path.

Trump won the election in rural areas, where he gained even more ground than before. But while voter numbers were also strong in cities, particularly in swing states, they also voted for Trump.

The end of the rainbow?

Similarly, the demographic breakdown of the results, which we don't know exactly, but which we can approximate with the results of Votecast, an Associated Press voter survey.

Again, the common story is that American voters are polarized along nearly every demographic divide—between white and nonwhite voters, young and old, male and female voters, and those with and without college degrees.

Barack Obama's ability to win among women, young voters and non-white voters – his so-called “rainbow coalition” – was key to his electoral success.

And while there were some signs of this waning in 2020, such as the shift to Trump among Hispanic voters in Florida and Texas, it was still key to Democrats' victory.

But this time Trump won among almost all demographic groups.

He scored 19 points among voters under 30. For black voters, 16 points. Among those of Puerto Rican descent, 15 points. Among those with a college degree, six points.

There were important differences within the groups. There has been a lot of emphasis on the Brothers for Trump movement, and it has seen a particularly pronounced uptick among young men (+14) and especially young black men (+18).

But still, young women (+14) and black women (+7) changed in the same way. Even the “childless cat ladies” demographic denigrated by Vice President-elect JD Vance held Harris by just 12 points.

In all of these cases the gaps are still present and in many cases large.

But the shift was enough to matter.

Among young women in Michigan alone, Harris's drop was worth more than 100,000 votes, accounting for most of the margin of Joe Biden's 2020 victory in that state.

And among black women in Georgia alone, the Democratic vote fell by 70,000, more than enough to flip the state.