It’s the morning after the election, and while half the country is waking up breathing a sigh of relief, another large share is disappointed, angry or even panicked. But what demographic voting patterns propelled the winner to victory? How did those patterns play out in the Electoral College map? And what does it mean for the future of American politics?

1. The Clinton landslide

In a staggering rejection of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, voters last night elected Hillary Clinton as the nation’s first female president, 53 percent to 41 percent — the widest margin in a presidential race since 1984. Clinton swept 30 states totaling 413 electoral votes. In an exclamation point, Clinton carried Arizona, Georgia and even Texas. Repudiating Trump, Utah gave its six electoral votes to conservative independent Evan McMullin.

2. Modest Clinton majority

Hillary Clinton became the first woman to win the presidency last night, defeating Donald Trump by a comfortable margin — 50 percent to 42 percent — roughly in line with what polls predicted. Clinton swept all 26 states that President Obama had carried in 2012, plus Arizona, North Carolina and Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, for a total of 359 electoral votes. In a stunning repudiation of Trump, Utah gave its six electoral votes to conservative independent Evan McMullin.

3. 2012 Map redux

After the most toxic and divisive presidential campaign in modern history, Hillary Clinton was elected the nation’s first female president last night, defeating Donald Trump 48 percent to 44 percent. However, in spite of Trump’s scandals and defiance of democratic norms, Clinton managed to win by only about the same 4 percentage point margin that President Obama won by four years ago. Clinton and Trump each won 25 states: Trump turned Iowa and Ohio red, but Clinton turned North Carolina blue, for a total of 322 electoral votes — 10 fewer than Obama picked up in 2012.

Bernie Sanders can still apparently pack a punch when it comes to fundraising.

The senator from Vermont raised just shy of $2 million in two days online this week for 13 like-minded U.S. Senate and House candidates, according to his campaign committee.

This week, Sanders tapped his massive donor list, sending out emails asking his fans to support candidates blessed by Our Revolution, an organization he launched after exiting the race.

The two-day take was $1.88 million, with more dollars continuing to come in. The biggest beneficiary, an aide said, was Deborah Ross, who has mounted an unexpectedly strong challenge to Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.). About $300,000 flowed directly to her campaign.

One of multiple solicitations sent out by Sanders referred to a recent warning by House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) that Sanders could take over as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee if Democrats take over control of the Senate.

Au moment de célébrer le premier anniversaire de son élection au gouvernement, Justin Trudeau se tourne vers l’avenir et reconnaît les nombreux chantiers qui l’attendent. Énergie Est, les communautés autochtones, mais aussi la réforme électorale promise l’an dernier et sur laquelle le premier ministre ne garantit plus qu’il ira de l’avant.

« Si on va changer le système électoral, il faut que les gens soient ouverts à ça », a laissé tomber Justin Trudeau, en entrevue exclusive avec Le Devoir cette semaine pour faire le bilan de la dernière année. « On va regarder comment se déroulent les consultations, les réactions, les résultats des rapports. On ne va pas préjuger ce qui serait nécessaire [pour modifier le mode de scrutin]. Mais quand on dit un appui substantiel, ça veut dire quelque chose. »

@JustinTrudeau's #electoralreform comments in @LeDevoir are outrageous & transparently self-serving. Let me explain

1st, on process. w/ #ERRE about to start final deliberations, PM Trudeau cynically undermines the whole democratic process

Now, on substance. #LPC made clear commitment that '15 fed election would be last 1 under FPTP
https://t.co/VZnctGLqu0

And @JustinTrudeau repeated commitment throughout 2015 campaign
https://t.co/mnetYE34eK

And post-election, reaffirmed promise to scrap #FPTP "to make sure that every vote counts"
https://t.co/POwJ8MCu53

Taking a bus, a train, or a ferry has long offered a level of convenience that air travel can’t. Arrive two hours before a domestic flight, and it can still be a stretch making it before the gate closes; show up at New York's Penn Station 15 minutes before your departure time (to minimize how long you have to stay in that dystopian nightmare of a building), and you’ll have enough time left over to grab a slice. That ease of travel that we gain from not having the intense—and, at times, bafflingly inefficient—TSA oversight found in airports may soon be a thing of the past, though, as a new bill making its way through Congress seeks to expand TSA’s reach onto buses, trains, and ferries, known collectively as surface transportation.

The bipartisan bill introduced last week by Senator John Thune (R-SD) and Bill Nelson (D-FL) would require that the TSA assess terrorism risk at all surface transportation facilities—bus depots, train stations, ports—and implement new security models based on those risks. According to website The Hill, the lawmakers cited concerns about whether the TSA is adequately identifying security risks in non-airport transport hubs. According to a report from the Office of Inspector General, the agency is not. Last year, 80 percent of the TSA's $7.4 billion budget was spent at airports, while only two percent went to surface-level transportation. “TSA lacks an intelligence-driven, risk-based security strategy that informs security and resource decisions across all transportation modes,” reads the report, observing a security approach “designed for the aviation mode and chiefly for air passenger screening.” Thune, Nelson, and co. want to change this with legislation that would see train operators gaining access to TSA’s terrorist watch list, more rigorous screening of passengers and employees, and an uptick in TSA canine units at stations and ports.

It’s easy to see why so many voters feel so strongly about the importance of the coming election, but as an empirical matter, statements like Giuliani’s are incorrect. That’s because, in comparison to many other developed democracies, the United States actually has frequent federal elections. In Canada and Britain, a single party can govern for up to four or five years before voters get to weigh in. In the U.S., by contrast, no party can maintain unified control of the federal government for more than two years before facing the voters. After 2016, we’ll have midterm elections in 2018, less than 22 months after the next president is inaugurated. I certainly won’t call those midterms the “most important ever,” but they will have a particular importance: Control of the U.S. Senate, and possibly the House, could hang in the balance. For whichever party that loses the 2016 presidential race, 2018 is a big-time consolation prize.

Since the 1930s, one of the most dependable regularities in American politics has been midterm loss, a swing against the party of the incumbent president. Whether due to a reaction to the sitting president’s agenda or to voters seeking a counterweight to the president, the party not holding the presidency has made gains in the House in the midterm elections in every election but two since 1934.

If history is any guide, the House GOP’s majority would face more risk from a President Donald Trump in 2018 than from Trump’s campaign in 2016.

Or imagine that Clinton prevails in November. If so, the most likely outcome is a continuation of the recent pattern of resounding GOP victories in midterm years. In 2018, Democrats will defend Senate seats they won in 2012 in several red states, including Indiana, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota and West Virginia. West Virginia’s Joe Manchin famously shot a copy of the cap and trade bill in a 2010 campaign advertisement — but even excellent marksmanship might not be enough in a third consecutive midterm wave for the GOP.

In addition, some of the most important aftershocks of the 2016 election are likely to be felt not in Washington but in state capitals across the country. In 2018, 36 states will choose governors. As I’ve pointed out before, our elections for governor increasingly track national trends. Governors are typically powerful officials in their own right, with substantial control over state budgets and policy. But even for those who care about power only at the federal level, there is good reason to care about the 2018 governors’ races: In many states with multiple House districts, those governors will have veto power over their states’ redistricting processes after the 2020 census. Over the course of the Obama presidency, anti-Obama voting in non-presidential years is a major reason why the Democrats have lost a net of 11 governors’ seats.

There’s a reason why jesters made fun of kings. Earlier this week, Jesse Watters, a correspondent for The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News, provided us with an excellent reminder that taking someone down a notch is never worthwhile if you’re doing it from above.

Watters visited New York’s Chinatown in light of the many, many comments made about China in the first presidential debate in late September. And as one does when they speak to Chinese-Americans, Watters asked people if they knew karate (which is Japanese), asked if he should bow as a greeting, got a foot massage, and seemingly willfully botched the Chinese language. The segment was spliced with clips from Chinatown and of Mr. Miyagi from Karate Kid (JAPANESE), and even used that “stereotypical Chinese nine-note riff” during the title card. Later in studio, Watters and Bill O’Reilly joked about how the Chinese are too polite a people to just walk away from the microphone to begin with.

Meanwhile, in Canada this week, Lauren Southern of The Rebel (Canada’s answer to Breitbart, a like-minded network run by a man who once wore a niqab on his defunct TV show to prove…something) did a segment related to the country’s Bill C-16. The bill, introduced in May, would amend the Canadian Human Rights Act to include protection for trans people. Southern visits a doctor’s office, secretly recording the encounter, telling the doctor that she’s “been a gender-nonbinary person for a year now” and that she uses male pronouns. In order to get her gender changed on her government-issued identification, she needs a doctor’s note. The doctor, naturally, gives it to her, because what kind of monster wants to change their identity on their health card just to trick the government? (To be clear, it doesn’t appear that Southern is trans. She also attended a trans rally yesterday at the University of Toronto, did not disclose that she is a “journalist,” and told the crowd that she’s trans. Later that day, she mocked everyone for clapping for her.) The Rebel and Southern are, at this point, well known for these faux-gotcha stunts, but this hit an impressive new low. (Until this, at least.)

Satirical shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report do and did pointed topical humor well, particularly when it was interview-based. Colbert made fun of overpaid, hyper-privileged screaming television personalities who added nothing to political conversations. The Daily Show correspondents went to the Republican National Convention and made fun of respectability politics and the inherent whiteness of the GOP. Even then, the segments were hardly mean-spirited, but rather tongue-in-cheek and heavily researched. They attacked ideas above attacking individuals (unless given a figure like, say, Donald Trump) and their jokes were rooted in the absurdity of injustice, or the clear failure of the government, as opposed to finding Chinese people funny.

The real difference is that comedy shows or segments that are legitimately funny always punch up. Instead of wasting their time going after people who are typically in the minority, they go after people with tangible power that’s being abused. A basic tenet of humor — and I mean real basic, we’re talking ancient Greece here — is that your best stuff will come from going after people bigger than you. But Watters and Southern, and their respective networks, are too dedicated to maintaining the status quo to be remotely entertaining.

The same trouble crops up when we have broader discussions about social justice or minority rights, particularly on platforms like Twitter, where it’s easy to drop a pithy line without context. So much of the anger around, say, black people asking to not be killed by the police comes from people who are at no substantial risk themselves of being killed by the cops. Men who send women sexist comments, cis people who refuse to understand a trans perspective, white people who become angry when people of color don’t watch their tone — it’s all presented with that “it’s just a joke” slant, as if a joke can blur any clear insult. The reality is that it’s actually about making sure a historically ignored group stays ignored or maligned.