Well, today was fun. I mean, it started out fun with the bundt cakes given to us by a friend who left them in the office - thanks, Clint! We got a good bit of of work done today with setting up for the new series and for this weekend, but there was one big thing on everyone's minds in this nation: Election Day.
Here's our election campaign center. You can see Josh and I at the office with our team hats...
Ah, and Maddie has her hat on too. Of course, we ourselves voted a few weeks ago, and you can probably tell by Maddie's attire who we voted for. Polling was indicating tonight that the swing states would be a battle, a "razor's edge," and over the weekend more in favor of the other candidate. And so the results started to come in. The idea was to do other stuff like decorate trees and so on, but nope. It was sort of an invasive thing, listening to the election. We listened early and sure enough the usual suspects started to fall - Kentucky and Indiana went red. Later on, Vermont went blue. Same old, same old. It was taking a little longer for those blue states to fall in line up top. But Florida was quickly going red, and that was interesting. And Georgia was going red too, and that was a flip from last time. It took hours for Georgia to be called. The usual suspect counties are to blame there, but we live in a battleground state, one that was supposed to be super close. It wasn't. Maddie's vote added up with the others, and our state went red eventually. It was a lot later. Things were lining up as expected. Ohio was a big deal that went red like it was supposed to. Michigan and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania were the biggest prizes of the night, and whoever got those would win the night. All the Southeast went red. The Northeast went blue. Illinois went blue because of Chicago. Colorado went blue, and of course we were expecting the West Coast to go blue, which it did. We were talking with others online the whole night as we watched the returns come in. Georgia was finally called, and that was huge. Bigger was North Carolina. And then it was a waiting game... hours went by, but things were certainly leaning red. And somewhere super late, that's when the shocker came: Pennsylvania went red. And that was pretty much it, just three votes shy of 270. It was apparent this could come from anywhere - Michigan and Wisconsin were clearly going red, but Arizona and Nevada were leaning red too. Still are - those two haven't been declared yet. It would be funny if it came to Alaska to finalize things, but that's when Wisconsin was called, and a President-elect was announced: Trump will be returning to office.
Interesting fun fact: there's a county that is in Texas that hasn't gone red since 1896. During that time, the President was Grover Cleveland, who until tonight was the only President to be elected to two non-consecutive terms.
Anyway, it was clear what was happening tonight - a red wave. Before the end of this election, the US Senate would be red, and the House of Representatives would be too. Quite a night. We waited for a good while, although Maddie was in bed long before any of this. We read to Maddie and we all said our prayers - Maddie knew who was going to win the election before she went to bed. We just had to wait on the confirmations, and then the speech our President-elect made at something like 3am or whatever it was. It was late. Wow were tired, but we were excited and we got to see it. And then... sleep!
But tonight the winner got the popular vote and the Electoral College. It was a quick and decisive election that didn't take days or weeks to determine. I say that remembering the year 2000, which sort of set the precedent for that sort of thing. But leads were too much, and it was clear tonight: Donald Trump will be President of the United States this January.
I was about to say 47th President, but we'll see how that unfolds over the next few months.
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