The final push of a campaign runs on optimism which deflates when the votes come in like the experience on election day 2024 in Johnstown. The video above I took with my phone is of volunteers who drove canvassers to different neighborhoods in Johnstown. The canvassers were bussed in from safe states like Maryland and Virginia.
Election Day 2024 in Johnstown
This video I took of an informal survey of polling places on my bike around Johnstown. The GoPro was mounted onto my bike so the angle wasn’t always on people’s faces. The turnout was higher in Westmont than in Johnstown. Searching for polling places in Kernville on the state website gave me the Roxbury Church of the Brethren. Cambria chair Nina Licastro told me there was a polling place in Kernville and there were problems with the state voting site. Kris Mamula, a reporter from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette was at the Vine Street Towers covering the event.
County Results
Because of a technical snafu with the vote scanner machines, polls were kept open until 10pm in Cambria County. The total vote is not in for the county. Thirty four out of 125 precincts in the county or 27% are fully reporting.
In the hotly contested race in the 72nd state house race between incumbent Frank Burns and former TV news anchor Amy Bradley, 24 out of the 58 precincts in the state are reporting. The Burns precincts are highlighted in blue in the image above and Bradley precincts are in red. As of this writing, Burns is ahead 53.32% to 46.32% overall. For the mail in and absentee ballots which are fully counted, Burns is ahead 63.53% to 36.04%. For the in person ballots which are still trickling in, Bradley is ahead 52.55% to 47.13% so far. The race is likely to tighten further.
National Results
Like everyone else, I was surprised by the result of the Presidential race. Trump performed better in than the polls were predicting. Looking at the exit poll data, the overall result of the exit poll is not provided but it can be reconstituted with a little arithmetic.
| U.S. Exit Poll Data | Male | Female | Overall Exit Poll | Election Results (83% in) |
| Total | 47% | 53% | ||
| Harris | 44% | 54% | 49.3% | 47.5% |
| Trump | 54% | 44% | 48.7% | 50.8% |
CNN exit poll page provides the first three columns of the table above. The estimated vote total for Harris can be found by multiplying the percentage of male voters (0.47) by the percentage of men who voted for Harris (0.44) and multiplying the percentage of female voters (0.53) by the percentage of females who voted for Harris (0.54). These two products are added together to find the estimated vote for Harris in the equation below.
(0.47 x 0.44) + (0.53 x 0.54) = 0.493 or 49.3% for Harris
Likewise, the same is done for Trump.
(0.47 x 0.54) + (0.53 x 0.44) = 0.487 or 48.7% for Trump
The exit poll predicted a 0.6% win for Harris in the popular vote but currently she is losing by 2.3%. Could this discrepancy be explained by the Bradley effect (not Amy Bradley)? This is where people might be reluctant to say what there preference for a candidate of color is to a pollster.
The 2024 election day in Johnstown is likely to have repercussions locally and nationally for years to come.