[pizzetta]

Has a conspiracy to have someone elected been confirmed? IFAIK, Russian ops was to sow distrust in the electorate not so much to favor one candidate over the other.

The ultimate goal would be to have the elections questioned by the losers (whoever the winner was) in order to diminish US influence abroad as the winner would be busy with internal affairs. It was probably a bet against Hillary winning since she had a more hawkish international vision.

[awinder]

Clinton's involvement with the Magnitsky Act gave Putin a lot to be specifically angry about, versus Trump who has a lot of existing ties to Russia (not to mention the campaign being filled with people who also had their own positive ties to Russia). It's possible that they did not have the specific goal of influencing for one candidate, but they had a ton more to gain from one specific candidate winning over the other. I think it takes some naiveté to assume they didn't have a focused effort on behalf of one candidate over the other.

[pizzetta]

That would make sense if the odds had been plus or minus 5 pts but by all accounts the odds were something like 93:7 in Hillary's favor. I don't think Russian intelligence had better understanding of our electorate than the DNC itself --they can't have been that out of touch with the people they were looking to represent.

[hackinthebochs]

Don't make the same mistake that Clinton did in buying into the media narrative of a landslide. Their stats were bad, hands down. 538 had the odds much closer.