[UPDATE]: The whole of the Maine legislator has flipped to the GOP. Several people I have talked to said such a deep and thorough shift to any one party has not happened in one election in the past 100 years.

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This is an unusual Morning Briefing because you need to understand what happened while you’ve been sleeping.

Republican gains are massive. And when I say Republican gains are massive, I mean tsunami.

No, the GOP did not take the Senate and some races are still outstanding, but the Senate GOP has moved to the right. More so, the Republicans picking up, in the worst case, seven seats is historically strong.

But consider that as you wake up this morning the Republican Party has picked up more seats in the House of Representatives than at any time since 1948 — that is more than sixty seats. Ike Skelton, Class of 1976, is gone. Many, many other Democrats are gone.

That, in and of itself, is significant. But that’s not the half of it. The real story is the underreported story of the night — the Republican pick ups at the state level.

There will be 18 states subject to reapportionment. The Republicans will control a majority of those — at least ten and maybe a dozen or more. More significantly, a minimum of seventeen state legislative houses have flipped to the Republican Party.

The North Carolina Legislature is Republican for the first time since 1870. Yes, that is Eighteen Seventy.

The Alabama Legislature is Republican for the first time since 1876.

For those saying this is nothing because it is the South, consider these:

The entire Wisconsin and New Hampshire legislatures have flipped to the GOP by wide margins.

The State Houses in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, Montana, and Colorado flipped to the GOP.

The Maine and Minnesota Senates flipped to the GOP.

The Texas and Tennessee Houses went from virtually tied to massive Republican gains. The gains in Texas were so big that the Republicans no longer need the Democrats to get state constitutional amendments out of the state legislature.

These gains go all the way down to the municipal level across the nation. That did not happen even in 1994.

This was a tsunami.