Congrats, Bill Owens! May your career of meddling with your own party’s agenda be long and fruitless.

Check out this map of NY-23 from The Swing Vote Project. It helps you get some perspective on how unlikely this was:

An interesting note: based on Nate Silver’s analysis, Owens seems to have carried all three of those pink counties.

So this wasn’t a really situation where more liberal-leaning counties dragged the rest along. As a matter of fact, it seems like Owens performs better the farther North you go. Which couldn’t be further away from my own forecast.

It will be interesting to see where the stragglers fall in line.