Who remembers Pennsylvania on election night?

[Takket]

So, with all this talk of recounts and such, which the pessimist in me is convinced isn't going anywhere... I can't help but recall something weird from election night.

After Hillary "lost" Florida, a ton of attention was being paid to Wisconsin and my home state of Michigan. They were seeing a "path to victory" for Trump if he could win that state.

Meanwhile, i was following the live vote totals online. And I was looking at Pennsylvania. It was close. Hillary was up by 50,000 or so. I remembering hovering over each county and all the red ones had 99 or 100% of the vote total in. One of the only counties not close to being counted was the one Pittsburgh is in. That one was only 25%. well, with Hillary already up and nothing but a major swath of Hillary voters yet to be counted, I figured she had that state wrapped up.

Well then the folks on CNN, taking a break from Wisconsin and Michigan start talking about Pennsylvania again. "Trump just took the lead there!" I go back and look online and he's up by 10k, 20k, 30k, just keeps going up and up despite all the red counties already being 100%. Then Pittsburgh came in, and Hillary caught up only a little bit, not enough, and once i knew Penn was lost, that was literally the moment i knew Trump had won, and I tried to go to sleep.

So, in retrospect now looking back.......... that all just strikes me as strange now! Don't know if a pile of "fake" votes just came rolling in???

[blue neen]

1. I was watching MSNBC.

In their coverage, Butler County was one of the last to come in. Butler County is hugely Republican, and at that point it looked really bad for Hillary....

[yeoman6987]

7. Erie was shocking!

I couldn't believe it went trump.

[NRaleighLiberal]

2. My problem is that I no longer trust either the media, or the politicians.

Just seems like something or someone else is pulling the strings, and we are the suckers.

then again, I stopped watching TV 8 years ago - so it is just what I read on newspaper or other political websites

[Dawson Leery]

3. Who to trust.

The rural areas report first. PA results are strange.

[chimpymustgo]

4. I have felt from the start the DU hack was part of the "strategy". So we couldn't share

stuff like this for a full WEEK.

[Madam45for2923]

5. Yes!

[Raster]

6. I agree.

[imaginary girl]

8. agreed

I felt the same that night.

[Island Blue]

10. I agree.

When DU was hacked (particularly when it went down the second time), I got a very bad feeling. I just felt like it wasn't the only thing that was being hacked that night.

[kydo]

11. Long really. DU was off line a week. But we were still stunned and with DU down and

our mistrust in the media and totally just not wanting to look at the coverage most Hillary voters turned off all forms of media. We came back to social media faster. But even at least for me I felt lost without DU but even people that don't come here were still stunned, numb, sick, depressed, and we were not processing things right in the head.

Now the shock is wearing off, yes we are not happy. Many are anxious, more are scared. But we are starting to think and piece it back together.

And DU being hacked may or may not have been part of anything. Just nasty person. But it still makes you wonder. Because the other message board hosts was also down for roughly the same time, as they are on the same server. DU shows up a lot when searching things. So take off two popular message boards might be important to the con, But maybe not and just a jerk that did it,

I am sure if there is news worth passing Skinner post it.

[Kashkakat v.2.0]

17. Here in WI our progressive talk station changed to xmas music the day after the election -

- very unsettling in combination with DU hack - I dont think the timing of that was an accident either. All I could think of was that political repression typically starts with shutting down of communications.... Im sure the Repub machine had been after the IHeartradio monopoly who owns that radio station for a long time to shut down the progressive programming - never mind it was one of the highest revenue progressive stations in the US.

[Achilleaze]

21. Bingo! You got it. DU down surely part of the Russian-Republican attack on America

...and democracy itself.

[JSup]

9. I noticed also...

...only I wasn't watching news, I was reading news sites and kept looking at the NYT results coming in. I have no idea where the votes came from as all of the red counties were already pretty much done.

Also isn't it usually that the red counties come in first and then the blue ones (since they take longer)? Seemed kind of backwards this time around.

I've been suspicious since the election but I also don't have much trust in anything these days anyway, so...

[BzaDem]

12. The election night NYT model showed PA leaning Trump well before Hillary lost her lead.

I remember watching the focus on Michigan and Wisconsin and wondering why they weren't focusing on PA more. The election night NYT model suggested that Trump would win PA by a larger margin than MI, which is exactly what happened.

As Harry Enter from 538 said before election night:

Pennsylvania: Clinton must win here. The polls suggest that she will. Democrats also probably need to win the Senate race between Democrat Katie McGinty and Republican Sen. Pat Toomey to have a shot at taking control of the Senate. That race is leaning toward McGinty. For either of those Democrats to win, she’ll need a big margin coming out of Philadelphia and its suburbs. Those areas almost always report first, so if you look up and see Clinton and McGinty with big leads in the first returns, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to win the state. Clinton probably won’t be called the winner when the polls close. If, however, the race is said to be “too early” instead of “too close” to call, that could be a sign of a strong Clinton night in Pennsylvania — and nationally.

[MyNameIsKhan]

16. The model had a built in lead for county like luzerne and when that went south the model refected

Can you imagine HRC lost luzerne by 26k votes and Obama won by 18k...

Look at this post

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12512617195

[Wash. state Desk Jet]

13. Yes it was odd indeed.

Too odd. So was Trump,s act seeming humble.

[C Moon]

14. I watched it all on 538...

Hillary was leading in Florida, then suddenly...120,000 votes for Trump.
Same with Michigan. She was ahead, and they said all the remaining counties are strong wins for the Dems...then whoops, she lost Michigan.
It went on like that all night.
538 reporters' heads were spinning. They didn't know what to make of it, and were saying things like, "that's why we can't believe the exit polls," or "you can't forget about the pan handle of the state...."
I knew something was up.

[MyNameIsKhan]

15. Well look at Lucezne county ... I am dumb founded

You can check this post

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12512617195

Pres Obama won this county by good margin and HRC lost by 20... the county has not voted R since 1992...

[elmac]

18. The combination of Putin hackers, the FBI, GOP election fraud

& a 3rd party spoiler was just too much for the campaign to bear. Its was the perfect storm and much of it was planned for years. A conspiracy, you can bet on it. Will anything be done about it, no. Because over half the country has given up on the American dream & law & order I believe that mass riots unlike anything this country has ever seen will erupt during the summer.

[DeminPennswoods]

19. No conspiracy

I live around a lot of Republicans and Trump voters. There are certainly plenty of bigots and those who only orbit around Fox News and rw radio, but there are also a lot of economically struggling people. For years, the old manufacturing companies have been busy getting out of their promised pension and health care obligations leaving these folks with a very frayed safety net. They know their kids likely will be worse off than them, too. I see and know people working 2 jobs to make ends meet, working their tails off for a little over $8-9/hr and few benefits, unable or unwilling to apply for state aid because the rules for qualifiying for assistance are so strict and make one feel like a criminal for being poor. And then they're told "save money" in 401ks or whatever for your own retirement. They live from paycheck to paycheck, what is left over to save? For them, they desperately want life and jobs to go back to the way they were when they were kids or before they retired.

Sadly, they don't make a connection between voting for Republicans and against their own self-interest leading to the lives they now lead. Clinton had the way to help revitalize the economy, but Trump said what these voters wanted to hear. I'm not at all surprised the downtrodden/poor/rural voters came out in droves for him.

[UCmeNdc]

20. This is why sites like DU was taken down on election night

Imagine if you were writing to DU on election night keeping this running total going live. Then the sudden change in votiing counts. This all done in writing here on DU. Imagine how quickly the word would get out that something strange is going on in PA.

No DU and other pro Democratic sites running on election night no live on them ground reports.


The election was flipped at the electronic central counting boxes. They are changing the counts after the results are sent in to the central counting areas.