0 voters
I was feeling pretty good during the campaign. I assume enough of the polls were close enough that Biden would have an easy win, and maybe much more. I knew about the red mirage, but still became shaky on election night.
ETA: once it was called (on Saturday I think) I wasn’t too worried about courts or unrest changing anything.
I had two real peaks of fear: hearing about RBG’s death (in addition to sadness and long-term court worry I thought “there goes the Senate again”) and on the first drop of bad results from Florida (“holy hell it’s 2016 all over again!”)
Up until around midnight on Election Night, I was seriously thinking Trump would win again. Arrows were dancing around on the probability meter graphics.
I was pretty apprehensive, but not despairing, the morning after the election, when Biden was so far behind in the Pennsylvania count. But once Pennsylvania was called I felt the victory would hold.
Not Election night… that was just depression. But “Election Dawn” and the next day(s) as we slowwwwwly watched Pennsylvania swing from Red to Mauve to Blue-ish… (Georgia and Arizona as well, but PA was the nail-biter).
It was when the polls turned out to be so inaccurate in Florida, and the odds temporarily dropped to 50/50. That replayed the whole issues with the polls again in my head from 2016. Plus I already was dealing with a personal issue that had my anxiety on edge.
Before then, I was pretty sure the polls were accurate enough, even if they might have some bias. And, after that night, the data coming in was a lot more reassuring. (I did take a 24-48 hour break in watching the news, exactly as I had been recommended to do so by those who said that the blue votes would likely come in later.)
I surprisingly wasn’t worried at all during the occupation: I went from thinking they’d be stopped to finding out that they’d successfully evacuated everyone, so I never felt there was actual danger. And the other stuff made me more angry than it did worried–though it helped that, after the first few, I would often only hear about a lawsuit after it was adjudicated by the courts.
My anxiety went through the roof on Election night, right before I went to bed.
I was incredibly disappointed and convinced we were in for another four years under the criminal cartel that was the Trump Administration. Despair was probably the best descriptor for my mood that night.
Then the next morning the real situation began to clarify, and I felt better. By the end of the day I was confident that Joe would pull it off, although it was a relief when they called it.
I also remember the night of the GA runoffs, about 2 weeks ago. I was watching the returns and it wasn’t looking good for the Blue team. So I turned off the TV, put on some music and cut off the lights —- deeply listening to music in the dark is my favorite meditation shortcut.
So I sort of drifted off, then when I woke up I had dreamed that the election turned and the Democrats were winning, then I turned on the TV and my dream had come true!
I got accidentally lucky during GA returns. On the NYT tracker, I confused the “votes counted” view (that went between blue and red and stayed red for quite a while) with the predictive needle view (which stayed pretty firmly blue after the first results were in, as they were tracking probabilities by district from the beginning). Watching the needle view, by the time I realized the predictions were not the results, the actual votes were clearly heading in the right direction - ignorance was truly bliss!
Election night and the following morning. I did quick math on PA and realized Biden needed about 67% of the remaining vote and felt dejected. Then I read that that was totally plausible, even plausible, and pretty much convinced myself it was in the bag. GA wasn’t even relevant in my mind. Just icing on the cake.
My anxiety didn’t drop all that much until inauguration day, and I’m still experiencing a hangover from that – PTSD if you will. We were all in an incredibly abusive relationship, and it’s very hard not to cower and expect it to continue and it may take quite a lot to get past that for me personally.
I’ve become a fatalist who doesn’t have faith in America to do the right thing, so I don’t know if I really had a lot of anxiety. I guess its my coping mechanism, not expecting better.
However when Trump kept trying to overturn the election results that gave me a bit of anxiety not just because he might succeed, but also because the next republican president will do the same thing.
I was pleasantly surprised the democrats won both senate races in Georgia, I figured they’d lose both.
I agree with squeegee, For endless millions of us, we just left an abusive relationship we never wanted to join in the first place. Its going to take a while to lower our guards. I hope to god the democrats don’t act like they did under Obama (naïve, gullible, easy to walk over) because its just going to cause democrats to either disconnect totally from politics or turn to other methods to be heard like rioting. After everything we’ve been through (Trump, failed coup attempts, GOP enabling) if the democrats just govern as wimps and let McConnell run the show, its going to cause serious issues for years with democratic voters. I have more anxiety about that than I did about Trump.
Yeah, I’ve reached the conclusion that America is irredeemable. I’m just glad I never had kids.
Like most I was at my lowest on election night, although by the time I went to bed I had read that some political pundits thought Biden had a chance and I think the NYTimes had Biden at 60%. I didn’t really believe them but I had some hope.
The next day kept getting better and the pundits were still saying Biden had a chance. I think most of my anxiety was gone by Wednesday night.
The weekend before the election, in the wee hours of Sunday, I woke suddenly to the following thought:
What if Trump uses the unidentifiable LEO agents they used in the BLM protests to arrest Biden this weekend, in the middle of the night? Even if he managed to get released before the election, would that depress the turnout of undecideds leaning Biden? And maybe he wouldn’t ever be released. Maybe he’d just be disappeared.
It took a long time to get back to sleep that night.
I voted for Election Night. Mainly because it was made official that about half of voting Americans have no clue about politics, fear the dumbest things (take my guns!!!) and never check their resources.
I probably would have been most apprehensive on election night, except that since 2016 I’ve made it a rule not to watch along. In 2016 things were looking good in Florida when I went out to dinner at 7 PM, but when I briefly checked at midnight Michigan was slipping away and I didn’t sleep the entire night. So I figure I’ll at least get some sleep in case there’s bad news in the morning.
I was really worried what those Trump appointed judges were going to do.
I was already fully versed on the red mirage pre election night. So I wasn’t too worried.