The extreme closeness of the vote in these three states was the major reason why Dewey waited until late on the morning of November 3 to concede defeat: a similarly narrow margin won Idaho and Nevada's electoral votes for Truman, and while Dewey countered by almost as narrowly carrying New York and Pennsylvania, the states with the most electoral votes at the time, and his birth state of Michigan, this was too little to give him the election. Dewey would always believe that he lost the election because he lost the rural vote in the Midwest, which he had won in 1944 (note the Kaltenborn predictions that Truman would joyously mock had taken for granted that the "country vote" would go to Dewey).