October 9, 2024
On what to expect the morning after Election Day...
Don’t worry. This isn’t about riots in the streets or civil war. It’s about the psychology of expectation and how it affects our reactions to events. I’ll tell you up front, I’m not a social psychologist. I am not a psychiatrist (though I date a very wonderful and talented one who would doubtless like me to state she had zero input on this piece and cannot be held personally or professionally liable for its contents). But I have had nearly eight years to think about the morning after Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, and it left me with a thought I haven’t been able to shake.
If you’ll remember, prior to polls closing on Election Day 2016, it was a foregone conclusion Hillary Clinton would win. She was up in the polls. She wasn’t even visiting swing states. The Javits Center had been rented for her celebration so she could figuratively break its glass ceiling.
Then the bottom fell out. Donald Trump won. People were leaving the Javits Center in tears before it was even official.
I lived in Los Angeles (aka, not Trump country) at the time. When I left for work the following morning, the city was abandoned. It seemed like the rapture had taken everyone but me and a few other confused drivers. It was wild, the kind of scene you see in zombie movies, but after the feasting has ended. The only moment I ever saw to equal it before or after was the 2018 wildfires, when people sheltered indoors for their health.
All this build-up is to say, what would that morning have been like if people had had some inkling Trump might win? It wasn’t likely. But it was possible. Clearly. The man won. I have a feeling that as much as Angelenos weren’t relishing the prospect of a Trump presidency, they would have been less despondent had they been prepared for the possibility. Maybe I’m wrong. Like I said, it’s just a feeling. But I don’t think you can deny there’s a difference between being told your bonus is in the mail and then getting a one-year subscription to the Jelly of the Month Club.
Now, this year is different. The polls are close. People are calling it a toss-up. But some are also desperate to discount information inconvenient to their desired outcome. That’s fine — it’s human nature. I’m as guilty of it as anyone. But it’s not helpful in the end. I’ve read a couple columns recently that I believe are. The first is this from Nate Silver. Don’t read all of it if you don’t have the time (I’ll readily confess a good portion of it was Greek to me), but the graph under the “How big is the Electoral College bias” heading is worth a long look. Then there’s also today’s link, which frames the race and polling in a way I hadn’t seen before. Neither link offers definitive answers, but they do serve to manage expectations, no matter your preferred candidate. It’s just a hunch, but I think that’ll come in handy the morning after Election Day.