It’s a daunting reality for Democrats: Republican Donald Trump’s support has grown broadly since he last sought the presidency.

In his defeat of Democrat Kamala Harris, Trump won a bigger percentage of the vote in each one of the 50 states, and Washington, D.C., than he did four years ago. He won more actual votes than in 2020 in 40 states, according to an Associated Press analysis.

Certainly, Harris’ more than 7 million vote decline from President Joe Biden’s 2020 total was a factor in her loss, especially in swing-state metropolitan areas that have been the party’s winning electoral strongholds.

But, despite national turnout that was lower than in the high-enthusiasm 2020 election, Trump received 2.5 million more votes than he did four years ago. He swept the seven most competitive states to win a convincing Electoral College victory, becoming the first Republican nominee in 20 years to win a majority of the popular vote.

Trump cut into places where Harris needed to overperform to win a close election. Now Democrats are weighing how to regain traction ahead of the midterm elections in two years, when control of Congress will again be up for grabs and dozens of governors elected.

There were some notable pieces to how Trump’s victory came together:

Trump took a bite in Northern metros

Though Trump improved across the map, his gains were particularly noteworthy in urban counties home to the cities of Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia, electoral engines that stalled for Harris in industrial swing states Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

Harris fell more than 50,000 votes — and 5 percentage points — short of Biden’s total in Wayne County, Michigan, which makes up the lion’s share of the Detroit metro area. She was almost 36,000 votes off Biden’s mark in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, and about 1,000 short in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin.

It wasn’t only Harris’ shortfall that helped Trump carry the states, a trio that Democrats had collectively carried in six of the seven previous elections before Nov. 5.

Trump added to his 2020 totals in all three metro counties, netting more than 24,000 votes in Wayne County, more than 11,000 in Philadelphia County and almost 4,000 in Milwaukee County.

It’s not yet possible to determine whether Harris fell short of Biden’s performance because Biden voters stayed home or switched their vote to Trump — or how some combination of the two produced the rightward drift evident in each of these states.

Harris advertised heavily and campaigned regularly in each, and made Milwaukee County her first stop as a candidate with a rally in July. These swings alone were not the difference in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, but her weaker performance than Biden across the three metros helped Trump, who held on to big 2020 margins in the three states’ broad rural areas and improved or held steady in populous suburbs.

Trump’s team and outside groups supporting him knew from their data that he was making inroads with Black voters, particularly Black men younger than 50, more concentrated in these urban areas that have been key to Democratic victories.

When James Blair, Trump’s political director, saw results coming in from Philadelphia on election night, he knew Trump had cut into the more predominantly Black precincts, a gain that would echo in Wayne and Milwaukee counties.

“The data made clear there was an opportunity there,” Blair said.

AP VoteCast, a nationwide survey of more than 120,000 voters, found Trump won a larger share of Black and Latino voters than he did in 2020, and most notably among men under age 45.

Democrats won Senate races in Michigan and Wisconsin but lost in Pennsylvania. In 2026, they will be defending governorships in all three states and a Senate seat in Michigan.

Trump gained more than Harris in battlegrounds

Despite the burst of enthusiasm Harris’ candidacy created among the Democratic base when she entered the race in July, she ended up receiving fewer votes than Biden in three of the seven states where she campaigned almost exclusively.

In Arizona, she received about 90,000 fewer votes than Biden. She received about 67,000 fewer in Michigan and 39,000 fewer in Pennsylvania.

In four others — Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin — Harris won more votes than Biden did. But Trump’s support grew by more — in some states, significantly more.

That dynamic is glaring in Georgia, where Harris received almost 73,000 more votes than Biden did when he very narrowly carried the state. But Trump added more than 200,000 to his 2020 total, en route to winning Georgia by roughly 2 percentage points.

In Wisconsin, Trump’s team reacted to slippage it saw in GOP-leaning counties in suburban Milwaukee by targeting once-Democratic-leaning, working-class areas, where Trump made notable gains.