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So what the hell happened last night?  How did Matt Bevin win so easily?  Turnout was higher this year than in 2011 by a big number of raw votes and by percentages.

Here's what I have so far:

Democratic turnout in Lexington and Louisville wasn't the issue.  In 2011, Steve Beshear won easily with 26% turnout.  In Fayette County in 2011, Beshear got 32k, Conway got 38k last night.  In Jefferson County, Beshear got 107k in 2011, Conway got 112k last night.

But, in Jefferson, Bevin got 30k more votes than David Williams did in 2011, and in Fayette, Bevin got 27k to Williams' 14k, a 13k difference.  Some of that came from Drew Curtis getting 10k votes in those 2 counties as an Independent when Gatewood Galbraith got 22k in 2011, but what this means is a healthy chunk of Republicans showed up in Louisville that didn't vote in 2011.

In total, 975k Kentuckians voted last night for governor, as opposed to 833k in 2011.

To put it simply, what happened is this: In 2011, Steve Beshear won 93 of 120 counties.

In 2015, Jack Conway won just 14 counties.  In Pulaski County, where the percentage of uninsured dropped from more than 17% to under 5%, Beshear won 51-40%.

Last night Matt Bevin won it by 47 points.

Conway lost county after county that Beshear won. 79 of them, to be exact.  In every case, turnout in these rural counties was higher and they turned out for Bevin.

Tens of thousands of people who voted for Steve Beshear in 2011 in fact turned around and voted for Matt Bevin last night.

Next door in Kenton County, in 2011 Beshear won comfortably, 51-45%.  Conway lost 57-40% last night.  And turnout was higher by 5,000 votes.

Conway just got smoked in coal country and everywhere else.  The pollsters were badly, badly wrong, all of them.  Beshear voters turned on him in droves.

@ZandarVTS no. he lost because he is unlikable -- left thought he was meh and conservative Dems thought he was NOBAMA.

— Joe Sonka (@joesonka) November 4, 2015

@ZandarVTS and NOBAMA is of course in large part the creation of the state Democratic Party that helped make him toxic for short term gain

— Joe Sonka (@joesonka) November 4, 2015

He lost.  And now, we pay for it.

And we know what Bevin's theory of government is.  He told us months ago.

“People in this town are nervous on both sides, but they ought to be,” Bevin said. “If you are not productive, if you are not adding value, if you are not justifying your existence in terms of a return on the taxpayer’s money you ought to be nervous. 

“If the taxpayer is not getting a good return on their tax investment, then we should reevaluate it. I’m agnostic to what that means. I don’t have predetermined notion as to what this means for merit versus non-merit, Democrat versus Republican. 

“I’m agnostic. I will come with a blank sheet of paper and I think that is healthy. Somebody who truly is not beholden to anybody. Somebody that doesn’t owe anyone any favors — that’s what makes people nervous about Jenean (running mate Jenean Hampton) and I. We are not beholden to anybody.”

Government run like a business.  We've gone from "Taxes are the cost of civilization" to "If you are not productive, if you are not adding value, if you are not justifying your existence in terms of a return on the taxpayer’s money you ought to be nervous."

Guess who determines who and what is productive, valuable, and justified in Kentucky now?

In the end, this state voted to stick it to the ni-CLANG! president and his "War on Coal".  And when things only get exponentially worse in rural KY, it'll still be Obama's fault.

Welcome to Bevinstan.