Landslide Victory

One of the determining factors behind Barack Obama’s presidential victory was that he managed to convince my generation that our votes actually mattered. Not just votes for him, but votes for his rival John McCain and anyone else in the running to be elected president of the United States. So thank God I decided to send in an absentee ballot. Originally I got an absentee ballot because I didn’t want to go through the trouble of trying to change my address, but I got the additional bonus of avoiding the ridiculous lines at the polls. This gave me the opportunity to kick back and watch some of the TV news coverage of the presidential election.
All I can say is that CNN dominated. I tried channel-surfing between CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC for the purposes of this blog, but found myself irresistibly drawn to CNN. They put up the news I wanted to know, and didn’t add anything unnecessary or extra (at least, not for the duration of the election—but come on, a Will-I-Am hologram? How was that relevant?) I loved the ticker at the bottom that showed minute updates of the status of the presidential, gubernatorial and senatorial elections in each state. The “projections” confused me at first, especially when a state only had less than 10 percent of their vote in because I thought CNN’s projections were what actually happened. Once I grew used to it, however, I didn’t mind that much. I stayed up until 4 am watching the coverage. I didn’t want to miss anything.