• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, November 9, 2016

In addition to taking the news media, pollsters, and associated coastal elites entirely by surprise, Donald Trump’s unexpected victory over Hillary Clinton in Tuesday’s presidential election set records falling all over social media, with an unprecedented volume of activity on big platforms, including Facebook and Twitter.

From the beginning of Tuesday to 3 a.m. Wednesday, when Trump gave his victory speech, Twitter saw 75 millions tweets related to the election – more than double the previous record of 31 million tweets, set during election day in 2012, when Barack Obama won a second term.

After announcing his victory, Trump updated his Twitter profile to claim the title of president-elect, and sent his first tweet, which read: “Such a beautiful and important evening! The forgotten man and woman will never be forgotten again. We will all come together as never before."

On the other side, a social media movement to express opposition to a Trump presidency arose around the theme “#blackout,” with users “blacking out” their Twitter profile pictures, as well as Instagram and Facebook photos, to protest.

Facebook also saw an enormous surge in engagement during the election, with 115.3 million people generating 716 million pieces of content and reactions, including likes, comments and shares. Facebook users also generated 643 million views of videos relevant to the election during the course of the night.

According to Facebook, between March 23, 2015, when Ted Cruz opened the Republican primary contest the announcement of his candidacy, and November 1, Facebook users generated a total of 8.8 billion posts and reactions related to the election. The second presidential debate alone saw 20 millions users generate almost 100 million posts and reactions.