Django test database looks empty while test is running
Django's TestCase is wrapping every test in its own transaction. So your database is not being used any time you do a request through ORM.
The database transaction that is being used by django.test.TestCase can be avoided by inheriting from django.test.TransactionTestCase instead of TestCase. Then the data will be visible in the database.
You might want to just do this temporarily while debugging, so that you get the performance benefits of django.test.TestCase the rest of the time.
Django docs:
django.test.TransactionTestCase
django.test.TestCase