Trump won every surprise swing state by the same 1% margin.

[Awsi Dooger]

90. I knew it was over by 9 PM

The assertion in a post in this thread that Hillary was leading the key swing states until all of them flipped on cue is utter bullshit.

I was following Florida expert Steve Schale on Twitter. His early tweets were positive enough, indicating that Hillary was faring well in the huge Florida counties. He expected Hillary to carry Florida by 1-2%. Then he added some caution, saying Trump was exceeding expectation in exurban counties and the state would be tighter than his initial estimate.

Then there was a very long pause between tweets. It was something like 20 or 25 minutes. Maybe slightly more. It was during that delay that I got nervous for the first time. It couldn't be good news, considering his prior pace. Sure enough, when he returned there was ominous news and tone. Schale reported that Trump was pulling better percentages in 47 different Florida counties than any Republican nominee from 2000 forth.

At that point I hadn't given up but I was absolutely numb. I knew what it meant. This was not isolated. The angry white males and rural voters were avalanching against Hillary, beyond all projection. At that point the state polls that everyone had relied on meant nothing.

Now Hillary had to sweep the board in the midwest, instead of Trump needing to sweep. I didn't consider Ohio because that state wasn't legitimately in play. There was one website tracking projected results in each state, given current tallies and sophisticated estimates of the outstanding vote. I wish I remembered what site that was. It was being linked on Nate Silver's site by Nate and the guys who were also live tweeting there. Anyway, I took one look at the Michigan projections and it was so disastrous I got sick and basically gave up. This was either slightly before or slightly after 9 PM. I'm not sure which. My neighbor soon knocked on my door with a stunned expression and asked what the hell was going on. I told him it was over. Then another friend started texting me. That was wild because I seldom text. He was likewise stunned and looking for any positive vibe. I told him it was over. I started packing for a trip scheduled for the next morning. That second friend continued to text for another hour. He was watching the networks, who apparently were being cautious. I had the TV off and the computer off. Every time he texted with some hope I told him to forget about it. Finally when the texts stopped at 10 PM or thereabouts I sensed that he finally realized it was over.

I haven't read that Shattered book. Maybe soon but I'm still not ready. This was an unforced error. Anybody who was going to be the nominee of this party had to realize post-2014 that a message was desperately needed toward the simplistic angry white males, designed to hold onto merely a few more percent of them. I'll be forever astonished that we didn't see it coming.