It was a commanding win but it also fell short of his 2016 victory by more than 10 points, when he won the governor's mansion with more than 75% of nearly 340,000 votes.

Burgum this year received 235,379 votes and Lenz received 90,763. In 2016, Burgum received 259,863 votes.

Precisely how Burgum came to lose those votes may not matter much in the coming session. He appears electorally untouchable a strong GOP incumbent in a deep-red state. But the shifts in his support from 2016 help sketch out exactly what's changed in the last four years, and give a glimpse at the political ground changing under North Dakota's feet.

Burgum saw his largest margins in western North Dakota, in and around the oil patch, and in rural regions throughout the state. In 30 counties, his share of the vote ran within 5 points either above or below of last election.

And its perhaps not surprising that his vote share was a little lower. As UND political scientist Mark Jendrysik put it, theres really nowhere to go from his 2016 performance but down from that commanding three-quarters of the vote.

But there are some key places where Burgum lost ground whether from the down-ballot effects of the presidential election, reactions to the pandemic or some other set of factors that pulled him back.

Democrats, for example, made gains in Burleigh County and along the I-29 corridor, where gubernatorial hopeful Shelley Lenz improved on the 2016 performance of Democrat Marvin Nelson. While Nelson had run at a dismal 19.4% of the statewide vote, Lenz picked more than 25%. Cass County was the epicenter for those gains, where Lenz was able to pick up a total 36.3% of the county's vote.

That's still an absolute beating for the Democratic-NPL but it appears to be an improvement over the previous cycle. In Cass County, Lenz outran Nelson by a remarkable 13.39% of the vote. In Burleigh, she outran him by nearly 10%, and in Grand Forks county, by nearly 8%.

In a sign of continuing realignment for the state party, Lenzs support was remarkably urban. Those three urban counties, together, accounted for 51.2% of Nelson's votes. On Tuesday, unofficial results showed they counted for more than 58.5% of Lenz's. That's the most since at least 2000, in a sign that the party's support just like its national counterpart is increasingly restricted to urban regions.

The reason that vote share surged is hard to tease out. Part of it could easily be the presidential election with votes for Democrats in both contests tracking upward in 2020. But in both years, the presidential candidate has outrun the North Dakota gubernatorial candidate.

Neither Burgum's campaign nor his office responded to a request to interview the governor for this report.

And while Burgum bled votes to Lenz, he also lost out to write-in candidates, who won significantly more ballots than in past cycles. Much of that is likely Michael Coachman, a conservative Air Force veteran who waged a write-in campaign on an aggressively limited-government platform.

The reporting requirements for write-in candidates make it hard to tell precisely how many write-in votes are Coachman's. This year's total 4.9% of the vote was far higher than before.

Coachman was far to Burgum's right on COVID-19, telling a crowd in October that he thinks Burgum's pandemic response went too far into North Dakotans' daily lives. Some had called him a bellwether for the strength of Burgum's political hand in the Legislature.

RELATED: Gubernatorial write-in candidate gaining support in western North Dakota

Multiple observers point out that a roughly 5% showing isn't nearly enough to matter as the next session convenes. But it does appear to be an indication that Burgum, choosing the middle road on his pandemic response urging masks, for example, but not requiring them could have cost himself votes both on his right and on his left.

"If it means something, who does it mean something to? Does it mean something to me?" said state Rep. Rick Becker, R-Bismarck. "Sure, because if Doug would have been a solid Republican candidate, then Coachman surely should have had less than one percent of the vote."

And like most observers, the Democratic-NPL Chairwoman Kylie Oversen points out that the item to watch in the coming session will be Burgums relationship with different factions within the Republican Party which will be tugged in different directions by responses to coronavirus, balancing the state budget and a new fight over the future of a deceased GOP candidates seat in District 8.

It's going to be an interesting dynamic to see how the Republican caucus fractures again, and how many factions come out of that break, she said.

Editor's note: This story was updated at noon Saturday, Nov. 14, to clarify that vote reporting requirements make it difficult to determine how many votes write-in candidates receive, under certain thresholds.

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Anatomy of a win: Gov. Doug Burgum won big on Nov. 3, but still lost ground when compared to his 2016 totals - Grand Forks Herald