Beshear’s margin of victory is ~4600 votes. Out of nearly 1.45 million votes cast.
A look at the NYT county map Beshear clobbered Bevin in the 3 counties with the 3 largest cities in the state. In the counties with these 3 large cities in them Bevin was stomped so badly it is astonishing.
That said, Bevin for whatever reason is highly unpopular.
He was ranked as one of the MOST unpopular governors in the country. Not up on Kentucky politics so I don’t know why.
That this race was this competitive is likely solely due to President Trumps visit to the state.
Yes, of course, but the media was just itching for this so they could do wall to wall coverage on how it is “over” for Trump. They got it. Doesn’t matter if it is true or not - it gives them another full news cycle of material to use for negative stories to damage Trump and try to demoralize GOP voters.