So what happened in Pennsylvania?

[DeminPennswoods]

I'm sure, like many Keystonestater's, I was very, very surprised by the election results. There was a huge turnout in Philadelphia that gave Clinton a 450+k margin. She also won the Phila collar counties, including Chester, by a lot. There are many republican counties in the state, but they are generally lightly populated.
I was stunned the margins there were enough to overcome a nearly 800k margin in the urban areas.

When I looked at the numbers from the Dept of State's election results, it turns out Dem Josh Shapiro who ran for state attorney general actually got the most votes of ANY candidate on the ballot. He overperformed Clinton by a little under 144k votes. Had just half of the Shapiro voters, voted for Clinton instead of who they did vote for or did not vote, HRC would have carried the state. In fact Dems swept every row office - attorney general, state treasurer and auditor general. The second consecutive election this has occurred. So there isn't some big reluctance on the part of Pennsylvanians to vote for Dems.

From my perspective, I live in western Pennsylvania. I am a loyal Democratic voter, yet there was absolutely no outreach to Dems here other than in Allegheny county. I think if HRC had done a few of her smaller "listening" events in a few spots out this way, she would have connected better and I feel would have changed enough minds to win.

[Glassunion]

1. I'll tell you what happened.

I'm eating a giant crow sandwich.

It's yuuuge!

I totally agree with your perspective.

[Thatyiddishboii]

2. agreed

the allure ofof the swing state

[mtnsnake]

3. Yes, you are right. She should have tried to connect with the rural PA voters more than she did

Ignoring rural America just because you're taking the cities for granted is a huge mistake. A lot of extra time spent in urban America, areas which we pretty much had wrapped up, should have been allotted for rural American.

[Auggie]

4. Michael Moore said 90,000 voters in Michigan failed to vote for either candidate

People filled out the entire ballot except for presidency, according to Moore. Perhaps the same or similar thing happened in PA.

[milestogo]

5. I find that hard to believe.

[Auggie]

7. Link:

This is a 45 minute or so discussion on Morning Joe, two days after the election. It's perhaps one of the most authentic discussions I've heard post election. Scarborough didn't even break for commercials.

http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/michael-moore-joins-wide-ranging-election-talk-806604867876

[RobinA]

6. As A PA Person

myself, I find an element of the Josh Shapiro win odd myself.

So, people vote for Repub Trump, then they vote for Repub Toomey, and they split to vote for Dem Shapiro? Shapiro is from Montgomery County, where I happen to be from, and we know him. But anyplace else in PA doesn't know him from a hole in the ground. I had about decided that Repubs went and voted for Trump and Toomey and didn't vote down ballot, so Dems carried the day with Shapiro when they went straight Dem. But your numbers don't jive with my theory. I believe that Jill Stein got more votes than the gap between Trump and Clinton, so there's that.

[PRETZEL]

11. Philly won for Shapiro

he took it by close to 450k.

Those counties where Clinton had won big, it was still fairly close in the AG race.

[Coyotl]

8. This on dKos, link to spreadsheet with some analysis:

http://www.dailykos.com/comments/1603227/64536423#comment_64536423

[doc03]

9. As your neighbor in eastern Ohio I agree 100%, there was zero outreach to Dems

in Ohio. They had this idea if they carried the big cities it didn't matter how the rubes in the sticks voted.
Just observing the enthusiasm of the Trump voters it was obvious we were in trouble but the campaign was
out in Texas trying to expand the f---g map.

[PADemD]

10. Northampton County went Republican this year

You can see in this summary that Trump/Pence won by a small margin overall.

http://www.northamptoncounty.org/northampton/lib/northampton/northamptonvote/sum.pdf

However, there is a big difference between the urban and rural areas in this vote tally by precinct.

http://www.northamptoncounty.org/northampton/lib/northampton/northamptonvote/precinct.pdf

[geek tragedy]

12. Barack Obama (in 2008!) seemed to be onto something

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Unfortunately, his administration failed to do any better than Clinton or Bush in that regard. So larger numbers of voters in those small towns began looking for another option, out of desperation and frustration.

[kudzu22]

13. I'd guess that telling coal miners you're going to end their industry

probably wasn't the best tactic. Coal miners are union workers and used to be a reliable democratic block, but they're not stupid. No matter how much you promise in retraining in new tech and green jobs, you're still standing there saying "I'm putting you out of work on purpose" and asking for their vote.

It may not be a major factor, but the margin was so thin -- it could have pushed the orange possum over the top.

[DeminPennswoods]

14. I did some cursory analysis of votes

Josh Shapiro actually underperformed HRC in Philly, Montgomery, Delaware and Chester counties. He's well known in SE Pa, so that's a bit surprising. He did much better than HRC in SW Pa. Maybe because both he and Rafferty are from the SE and so the SW voters just went for party ID, but I don't know.

[Cosmocat]

15. I knew Hillary was in trouble at 10 am

I work a pole in a semi rural area. Republican leaning.

By 10 a.m. we had more voters than any other election other than Obama Romney. I started getting a knot in my stomach at that point because I knew she was in trouble.

The most we had was Romney Obama 650 voters. End of the day we had over 900.

Trump got over 500 votes. Hillary got a little over 300. This margin was significantly greater than Romney had over Obama in our Precinct.

The angry white vote came out. Nothing she could have done about it. She could have came up here and had some sort of speaking engagement and people just would have been throwing Tomatoes at her.

The general evil Liberal thing and 30 years of slander and hatred directed toward her.

Honestly, as I posted here before the election, the trump vote was a big middle finger to the rest of the country.

[blue neen]

16. Yep.

We waited an hour and 10 minutes to vote; this is a very Republican area. That was not a good sign.

[Dem2]

17. Saw it here in the reddest part of NH too

I was nervous after voting at 8 AM, something didn't feel right.