The Hillary Clinton campaign repeatedly dismissed the concerns of its own operatives on the ground in Michigan, belittling their work and ignoring warnings that she might lose the state.
The staffers based at headquarters in Brooklyn, New York, explicitly ordered operatives in Michigan not to build a voter turnout tracking system, saying they didn’t care about those numbers because their own data showed her winning by 5 points. Perhaps more importantly, they dismissed in-person voter outreach efforts and distributing literature as a waste of time, and discouraged the collection of information from what contact volunteers did make with voters. (RELATED: DNC Poured Millions Into Chicago Fearing Hillary Might Win Election But Lose The Popular Vote)
“Operatives watched packets of real-time voter information piled up in bins at the coordinated campaign headquarters. The sheets were updated only when they got ripped, or soaked with coffee. Existing packets with notes from the volunteers, including highlighting how much Trump inclination there was among some of the white male union members the Clinton campaign was sure would be with her, were tossed in the garbage,” Politico reports.
Clinton’s arrogant mindset apparently caused the campaign to miss key voter trends, such as the loss of white union members to Donald Trump in states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania. On the morning of Election Day, the campaign was so confident of a Clinton victory, staffers began drinking in the afternoon and making phone calls to potential transition team picks.
Around 1 p.m. on Election Day, an operative on the ground in Michigan called headquarters to warn them the voter turnout numbers they collected (in defiance of the orders to the contrary) were not looking good for Clinton. Turnout in urban precincts was down 25 percent, the operative told headquarters, and the campaign should possibly be worried.
“Nope, they were told,” Politico reports. “She was going to win by 5. All Brooklyn’s data said so.”
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