He did great in most fast-growing Southern metro areas, better than could have been expected.
He did well in areas that had been growing very quickly in most places. I wonder how much of that is related to house price woes.
Btw, in addition to the issues already raised about his poor results in white Democratic areas in the South, a general lack of appeal in some traditional working class areas (in addition to the metropolitan-rural thing) has to be added. Some trend maps;
(pattern somewhat exaggerated around Pittsburgh by media market stuff and so on)
...etc, etc, etc...