In February Democrats in Wisconsin celebrated when Tony Evers, the Democratic governor, signed into law new maps for the state legislature and Senate. The maps were the result of Democrat-aligned judges becoming the majority on the state Supreme Court, and the signing undid 13 years in which Republicans won lopsided majorities on thin vote margins. It constituted a “sea change”, said Ben Wikler, the state’s Democratic Party chairman, and on November 5th voters would have a real chance to throw out their Republican legislative leaders for the first time.

They didn’t. With several seats still undetermined, Republicans controlled 52 of the 99 seats in the state legislature—a big drop from their previous 64, but still a solid majority. They lost their supermajority in the state Senate, but retained control. Wisconsin reflected dashed hopes for Democrats down-ballot across America. Whereas in 2022 four state legislatures flipped to Democratic control, this time Republicans clawed some back. Overall, the result was a slight increase in divided government.

In Michigan Democrats lost their narrow trifecta, and that seemed likely in Minnesota as well, where two races are heading for recounts. In Pennsylvania, where the governor is a Democrat and his party controlled the House but not the Senate, they were on track to lose it. In New Hampshire, in one of the few competitive governor’s races, Kelly Ayotte, a Republican, beat her Democratic opponent comfortably, which means the party should retain its trifecta. Democrats also seemed unlikely to make good on hopes of taking the Arizona House of Representatives for the first time since the 1960s.

The news for Democrats was not universally bleak. They won the governorship of North Carolina, where Josh Stein defeated Mark Robinson, who was revealed to have described himself as a “black Nazi”. They also won the offices of the lieutenant-governor, attorney-general and superintendent of public schools and broke the Republican Party’s supermajority there, meaning that the state’s Republicans will have to negotiate with Mr Stein if they want to get legislation passed over his veto. Democrats also held onto their supermajorities in the state legislatures in New York and Illinois, despite the surges for Donald Trump in the presidential races there. Republicans did not add any states to the 22 they already completely control.

What does it mean? State governments are powerful. In Minnesota and Michigan, for example, taking control of governments in 2022 allowed the Democratic governors to pass swathes of legislation—legalising cannabis, introducing free school meals, expanding abortion rights, tightening gun-control laws and giving more power to trade unions. Had Democrats held or increased the number they controlled, they might have been able to mitigate some of Mr Trump’s national policies. Instead, the governors of those two states, Gretchen Whitmer and the losing vice-presidential candidate, Tim Walz, will probably finish their terms with fewer bills to sign.

Elsewhere, expanded Republican majorities may lead to more aggressive legislating. In Texas Greg Abbott, the governor, said he now has “more than enough votes” to pass a school-voucher programme, which he has tried and failed to get through the legislature, stymied by rural Republican holdouts. But Democratic strategists in several Republican-dominated states say the losses could have been far worse: with Joe Biden at the top of the ticket, some expected a “tidal wave” of new supermajorities. Chaz Nuttycombe, the president of State Navigate, which crunches data on state races, reckons that this year there may well have been more ticket-splitting, where voters chose Mr Trump and their local Democrat, than in 2020.

Polling from Pew published in May showed that voters consider the inability of Republicans and Democrats to work together to be the second-worst problem facing America, behind only inflation (which is now easing). In recent decades divided government had in fact been receding. The bounceback is modest, but division is going to be more entrenched. ■

This is the introduction to The Economist this week, a free weekly newsletter that includes a note from our editor-in-chief, Zanny Minton Beddoes.

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The world has just witnessed a historic turn. Donald Trump’s election as America’s 47th president was not a fluke: his victory was decisive. By securing more than 70m votes, he has won the popular vote for the first time in three attempts. The Republican Party now runs the Senate and is likely, within days, to secure control of the House. Add that the Supreme Court will be firmly entrenched with MAGA values for a generation. All this constitutes a stunning comeback and provides a powerful mandate for Mr Trump; in our cover leader we call him the most consequential American president since Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Our weekly edition considers what a second Trump presidency means. If Mr Trump has wrecked the old order, what will take its place? Will the return of Trumponomics spark a global trade war? How will Mr Trump handle the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East? His sweeping victory could set the tone for fellow nationalist populists such as Marine Le Pen, who hopes to secure France’s presidency in 2027. Mr Trump was too easily dismissed as an aberration in his first term. Not now. He has defined a new political era, for America and the world.

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FOR THE third presidential election in a row Donald Trump has stumped America’s pollsters. As results came in on election night it became clear that polls had again underestimated enthusiasm for Mr Trump in many states. In Iowa, days before the election a well-regarded poll by Ann Selzer had caused a stir by showing Kamala Harris ahead by three percentage points. In the end, Mr Trump won the state by 13 points.

Overall, the polling miss was far smaller. Polls accurately captured a close contest in the national popular vote and correctly forecast tight races in each of the battleground states. National polls erred by less than they did in 2020, and state polls improved on their dismal performances in 2020 and 2016. Yet this will be little comfort to pollsters who have been grappling with Mr Trump’s elusive supporters for years.

The Economist’s nationwide polling average found Kamala Harris leading by 1.5 percentage points, overestimating her advantage by around three points (many votes have yet to be counted), compared with an average error of 2.7 points in past cycles. State polling averages from FiveThirtyEight, a data-journalism outfit, had an average error of 3.0, smaller than the average of 4.2 points since 1976.

But in contrast to 2016, when pollsters’ misses were concentrated in certain states, those in this cycle were nearly uniform across state and national polls. In the seven key states, polling averages underestimated Mr Trump’s margin by between 1.5 and 3.5 points (see chart). Pollsters may claim that their surveys captured the “story” of the election. But the awkward question remains: why did they underestimate Mr Trump for the third cycle in a row?

In past election cycles, pollsters have tweaked survey “weights” to make their samples of voters more representative. Although polls aim to sample the population randomly, in practice they often systematically miss certain groups. Weights are used to increase the influence of under-represented respondents. This has been especially true in recent years as response rates have plummeted.

After the 2016 election, when surveys systematically missed voters without college degrees and therefore underestimated support for Mr Trump, pollsters began accounting for respondents’ education levels. And after 2020, in an effort to ensure that Republican voters were represented, more pollsters began weighting their samples by respondents’ party registration and self-reported voting history. This caused the range of poll outcomes to narrow (weighting reduces the variance of survey results), with many pollsters finding similar results in key states and nationwide.

If there is a lesson from this year’s election, it could be that there is a limit to what weighting can solve. Although pollsters may artificially make a sample “representative” on the surface, if they do not address the root causes of differential response rates, they will not solve the underlying problem. They also introduce many subjective decisions, which can be worth almost eight points of margin in any given poll.

A pollster which gets those decisions right appears to be prophetic. But with limited transparency before the election, it is hard to know which set of assumptions each has made, and whether they are the correct ones. To their credit, the pollsters get together to conduct comprehensive post-election reviews. This year’s may be revealing. Still, without a breakthrough technology that can boost the representativeness of survey samples, weighting alone is unlikely to solve pollsters’ difficulty in getting a reliable read on what Trump voters are thinking.■