🎯 Axios PM: Eyes wide open

Good Wednesday afternoon. Today's newsletter, edited by Sam Baker, is 409 words, a 1½-min. read. Thanks to Sheryl Miller for copy editing.

🗳️ Situational awareness: AP called Michigan for President-elect Trump today, bringing him to 292 electoral votes. Trump leads in both Arizona and Nevada — the only states that haven't been called. Check our live map.

If some Americans sleepwalked into a Trump presidency in 2016, they were wide awake this time around.

• Why it matters: The polls were neck and neck, the stakes were clear and turnout was high. The American people definitively chose Trump, Axios' Dave Lawler writes.

📊 Trump won the popular vote for the first time. He won every swing state that's been called, and he gained significant new support — even in several blue states.

• He gained ground this time around with Black voters, Hispanic voters, suburban voters and young voters.

⚡️ Flashback: Trump won in 2016 with an incredibly narrow Electoral College victory, and lost the popular vote. That election took millions of Americans by surprise.

• After a chaotic four years, a resounding 2020 loss and the Jan. 6 attack, even many of his allies thought he couldn't win again.

Voters knew what they were getting with Trump this time around — and 72 million and counting voted for it.

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The Harris campaign was counting on abortion rights to help propel Democrats to victory.

• They weren't wrong about the public's sentiment on the issue. But voters in several states separated their support for abortion rights from their presidential votes.

☑️ By the numbers: Majorities of voters in Missouri, Montana and Florida supported ballot measures to expand or codify abortion rights. (Florida's won't become law — it needed 60% and got 57%.) Trump easily won all three states.

• Abortion-rights initiatives also passed in the swing states of Arizona and Nevada.

Some Medicare patients will pay more for medicines. Others may not be able to get their medicines.

• 89% of insurers and PBMs say they plan to reduce access to medicines in Medicare Part D because of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Higher costs and less access. That's not what seniors were promised.

Learn more.

1. 📞 Vice President Harris called President-elect Trump today to concede. Trump communications director Steven Cheung said: "Both leaders agreed on the importance of unifying the country." Go deeper.
2. 🏛️ Republicans look increasingly likely to win control of the House, The Wall Street Journal reports. They've already won the Senate.
3. 📈 Stocks, Treasury yields, the dollar and bitcoin all surged after Trump's victory, Reuters reports. The S&P 500 had its best day in nearly two years, and the Dow surged 1,500 points.

The Manhattan skyline glowed red, white and blue on Election Day.

Higher costs and less access to medicines are not what seniors were promised when the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was signed into law.

The impact: Instead of saving money, some Medicare patients will pay more for medicines.

Learn more about the IRA's unintended consequences.

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