CNN
CNN's Jake Tapper was shocked to learn a crucial data point about Kamala Harris' election loss to Donald Trump.
The former president defeated the vice president in Tuesday's election by performing better than polling suggested, and Harris was unable to build on president Joe Biden's vote count from 2020 in any single county in the nation.
"Take me back to the places where Donald Trump is overperforming," Tapper said. "Are there any places where Kamala Harris overperformed from where Biden did?"
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His colleague John King said Harris did worse this year than Biden did four years ago across the board.
"If she comes back and beats him, it will be 50/50," King said, several hours before the network called the race for Trump. "Again, underperforming the president in places. So you asked, are there any places the vice president is overperforming Joe Biden in 2020."
King zoomed out on an electoral map of all 50 states that showed Harris had not earned more votes in any single county than Biden had when he defeated Trump.
"Holy smokes," Tapper said. "Literally nothing? Literally not one county?"
King said there were no counties in swing states where Harris gained 3 percent or more over Biden's totals, while Trump had made gains over his own performance in his 2020 loss.
"In the states that matter, I just showed you all the Trump counties," King said. "In one county in battleground Pennsylvania, he's outperforming president Biden by 3 percent or more."
However, both Tapper and King agreed that Biden would not have likely improved on his own totals had he remained in the race.
"Would the Democrats have lost those in the end?" King said. "I don't know the answer to that but if all the Democrats would have broken with the president, it would have caused amazing dissidence in the Democratic Party. Donors were not going to give money. Again, I don't want to be disrespectful to the president of the United States but have you seen anything – the vice president of the United States looks like she's about to lose the presidential election. She was campaigning vigorously from the second she got the nomination until the votes counted today. Is there any evidence on the table that the president of the United States could do half of what she did?"
"No," Tapper said.
"A third of what she did?" King added.
"No," Tapper replied.
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