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On Election Night 2016, at approximately 7:45 p.m.,Steve Schalewas at an Orlando brewpub.

The Democratic strategist opened his laptop to review his states election returns.

Its in real bad shape, Schale toldHillary ClintonpollsterJohn Anzaloneand campaign consultantJim Margolisin a phone call.

What the f**k are you talkingabout, Anzalone asked disbelieving, according toShattered,ariveting look behind the scenes ofthe Clinton campaign.

Shattered is now the No. 1 non-fiction book on theL.A. Times best-sellerlist,and sits at No. 2 on The New York Times best-seller list.

Trumps numbers werent just big, they were unreal, say co-authorsJonathan AllenandAmie Parnes.

They write:

In rural Polk County, smack-dab in the center of the state, Hillary would collect 3,000 more votes than Obama did in 2012 but Trump would add more than 25,000 to Mitt Romneys total. In Pasco County, a swath of suburbs north of Tampa-St. Petersburg.

Trump outran Romney by 30,000 votes. Pasco was one of the counties Schale was paying special attention to because the Tampa area tended to attract retirees from the Rust Belt folks whose political leanings reflected those of hometowns in the industrial Midwest.

In particular, Schale could tell, heavily white areas were coming in hard for Trump.

A couple of paragraphs later, Allen and Barnes note:

Youre going to come up short, Schale told Margolis and Anzalone.

The book also reports Schale set off an alarm bell unnecessarilyin the eyes of some of Clintons senior aides.

They demanded to know what data he was using to determine that the race was over so early.

As the worldwould learn, of course, Schale was right.

Despite polls saying otherwise, and despite a supposed surge in Latino voters in early voting that was to be the hidden weapon to bring Clinton a victory in Florida,Donald Trumpwon the Sunshine State by 1.2 percentage points.

When it was clear that Trump would win Florida, other states began falling in line, setting off one of the greatest political upsets in U.S. history.

In an email Thursday, Schale told FloridaPolitics.com:

The first returns from Pasco were horrendous, and I initially thoughtshe was done, but very quickly, urban counties came in, and she waswell ahead of all the benchmarks.

She was also doing wellinplaceslike Seminole, and her absentee numbers in places like Sarasota and Pinellas were looking fine. Margolis and Anzalone called me at about7:15to ask if I was seeing the samething they were, and I confirmed thatI was, and I was cautiously optimistic.

By about7:45, the bordercounties on I-4 those around the urban ones started to reportmorecompletereturns, and it became pretty clear, when combined with less than robust Election Day returns from the base counties, that shewould not go into8 p.m., when the Central time zone counties report,with a big enough lead to offset what was going to happen there.

Icalled those guys back, to tell them she was going to be short in Florida, and the book basically takes it from there.

In Shattered, the authors report that when the Clinton camp learned they would probably lose Florida, they also heard they were losing in North Carolina. They were keystone states for two of Hillarys three paths to victory.

A short time later, Bill Clinton called Craig Smith, the first person hired forClintons1992 campaign, and the co-founder of Ready for Hillary,the super-PAC formed at the beginning of 2013to support a Clinton presidential run.

FromShattered:

Sorry to be the one to tell you, Smith said in an Arkansas drawl echoing the former presidents, but were not going to win Florida. Bill hung up and called GovernorTerry McAuliffe, who was eager to depart Virginia for the victory party at the Javits Center. Dont bother coming, Bill told him.

According to a post on hisblogafter the election, Schale said Clinton had a roughly four-point edge inearlyvoting and vote-by-mail tallies going into Election Day.

Trump won by 360,000 votes 13 points more than enough to overtake Clintons early vote lead.

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Steve Schale on the night the lights went out on Hillary Clinton in Florida - SaintPetersBlog (blog)