TV station's election results mix-up creates stir in crucial swing state
Pennsylvania TV channel accidentally showed test election data during F1 race broadcast‚ displaying non-existent voting results for Harris and Trump. Station quickly addressed the mishap explaining it was just a technical test
A pre-election technical test went wrong when WNEP-TV (an ABC-linked channel in Scranton) displayed made-up voting numbers during a Mexico-city F1 race broadcast
During the mix-up viewers saw data showing Kamala Harris getting 52% of votes while Donald Trump had 47% (with exact numbers being 3‚293‚712 to 2‚997‚793); this test-data appeared with a “100% precincts reporting“ label
The channel explained the situation: test-data got shown by accident while they were checking their systems for the Nov 5th election day. Its important to note that Pennsylvania doesnt even start counting mail-in votes until 7am on election day; no real counting happens until after 8pm when polls close
Pennsylvaniaʼs significance in presidential races is huge — its got the most electoral-college votes among swing-states. Recent polls show Trump leading by less-than-1-percent‚ which reminds many of the super-close 2020 race when Joe Biden won by just about 80k votes
Those numbers should not have appeared on the screen and it was an error by WNEP that they did. The numbers seen were randomly generated test results
The incident sparked some online buzz‚ especially after Trumpʼs recent claims about Lancaster County ballots (which officials are still looking into). Meanwhile polling experts point out that Pennsylvania hasnt missed picking the winner since late-2000s
