THE ETERNAL VERITIES OF VOTER TURNOUT.

A New Yorker cartoon from 2016 had it down.

"Ultimately, it all comes down to Waukesha County." A cartoon by Paul Noth, from 2016. pic.twitter.com/MrjubqHeUH

— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) February 16, 2018

It still might.  Let us call the roll of "8 key counties that could decide the Trump-Harris election."  First up, Cobb County, outside Atlanta.

You’ve probably heard that “the suburbs” are the secret to Democratic success in recent elections. Cobb County is a great example of this phenomenon.

Located just northwest of Atlanta, Cobb was solidly Republican for decades — in part because it was majority white. But the county has diversified fast, and now its population is 30% Black, 15% Latino and about 6% Asian. Nearly 16% of residents are immigrants.

At the same time, Cobb County has remained affluent and highly educated; the Home Depot and the Weather Channel are headquartered there, and Coca-Cola, UPS and Delta are just a short drive away.

This has not been good news for Trump. In 2016, Hillary Clinton bucked Cobb’s historical GOP lean, winning there by just over 2 points; in 2020, Biden expanded that edge to more than 14 points. As a result, Biden became the first Democratic presidential nominee to win Georgia since 1992.

The Democrats might be courting new problems becoming a party for and by the professional-managerial classes.  We'll turn to that in a day or two.

Right behind Cobb is Waukesha.

To win key swing states, Harris doesn’t have to win every suburb — she just has to keep cutting into the GOP’s margins in places like Waukesha County.

Long a Republican stronghold — former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker regularly won there with more than 70% of the vote — Waukesha has gone from solid red to pale red in the Trump era.

White, affluent, college-educated voters — former Republicans who support abortion rights and have recoiled from Trump — are the reason. Waukesha is about 86% white, compared with 58% nationally; at more than $100,000, the county’s median household income exceeds the U.S. average by 35%.

As these voters have moved to the middle in recent years, the gap between the Republican and Democratic vote in Waukesha County has closed. In 2012, Mitt Romney won there with 67% of the vote; in 2020, Trump won with less than 60%. Why? Because Biden outperformed his old boss, Barack Obama, by nearly 9 percentage points.

That's another gathering place of the degreed professionals.  The other six:  Washoe in Nevada, Douglas in Nebraska, Carrabus in North Carolina, and Erie in Pennsylvania include cities of size, with a population increasingly drawn from the ranks of the degreed professionals, while Wayne in Michigan and Maricopa in Arizona have figured in recent election administration kerfuffles.

No doubt there will be plenty of exit polling for the talking heads to talk about commencing late tomorrow afternoon.