Which state was the most surprising?

[Sam Spade]

Clearly West Virginia and Vermont, though I was also mildly surprised at Alabama's percentages, to mention a state that hadn't been mentioned here before.

To toot my own horn:

I don't ever trust any polling out of Wisconsin and go by the mean if anything.  Those damn German Catholics in Wisconsin are the true swing voters in this country and trying to predict them is a fool's errand.  So, I predicted that Kerry would win by about 0.1% because of Milwaukee hijinks.  Dead on.

In Florida, I only trust Mason-Dixon and still only trust Mason-Dixon.  They said +4, I predicted +5 because of the hurricane factor.  And I nailed it.  It could just have easily been +3 based on Mason-Dixon, so that wasn't a wrong guess to those who made it. 

Those who predicted ties were not able to separate the wheat from the chaff in Florida and in Florida polling, the chaff in polling always grows strongly and obscures the wheat.

[Sam Spade]

Good Surprise: Dems doing better across the entire northern tier of the country, even in places like ND & ID (trend-wise, not actual results) And even in the south some good news: We won Fairfax, Mecklenburg (Charlotte, NC) and almost won Dallas!

Dallas County is not Dallas.  Only a certain area of Dallas County actually forms the city of Dallas and the city of Dallas is blocked by suburban municipalities on all sides.  About 50% of the population resides in the city of Dallas (1.2 million), the rest are in suburbs (1.2 million).  The Dallas-Fort Worth metro area (key term) is roughly 5.2 million and includes the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth and its various and surrounding suburbs in Dallas County, Tarrant County, Collin County and Denton County.

The Dallas-Fort Worth metro area continues to produce roughly a 60%-40% Republican split in most Texas local and federal elections.  This election was no different.

The population of city of Dallas is stable, not growing or declining.  I would say demographically it's probably 1/3 black, 1/3rd white, 1/3 Hispanic (don't know for sure), but the blacks vote in extremely large numbers greater than the Hispanics, most of whom are not legal citizens.

There is no doubt in my mind that the city of Dallas voted strongly Democrat in 2004, as it has since 1988 at least, but as the City of Dallas only forms roughly only 1/20th of the Texas population and 1/10th of the actual vote, 1/5th of the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area and 1/4 of the actual vote and probably roughly 1/2 of Dallas County and its vote, it only affects the Texas totals so much.