Election Day Drinking Strategies
Midjourney illustration. Prompt: “foreground closeup of a hand tightly holding a whiskey glass with a television screen showing election results is in the background”
A true story. On one of our quadrennial election days—to protect the innocent and nonpartisan I shall refrain from identifying the year—I was feeling most hopeful. I slipped out of work at lunch and purchased an expensive bottle of single-malt Scottish whisky (Islay provenance). Friends gathered around a television and we settled back, victory bottle at the ready. The night turned ugly for our team, however, and as this reality began to dawn in our minds, we plucked that bottle from the coffee table and poured out generous glasses to settle our nerves. The celebratory tipple became, a few hours later, a smoky toast over which we eulogized a campaign.
I mention this because elections are unsettling, nerve-jangling affairs, and you need to enter them with a battle plan. Elections are tricky, unpredictable events, and any good plan should function, as did that bottle of scotch, in multiple scenarios. It’s always joyful/relieving when things go better than planned, but where a boozy game plan is concerned, you want to emphasize strategies for mitigating despair/panic. Don’t worry, I got you.
The Slow Wind-Up
By tomorrow, you will be exhausted from the election ordeal, your nerves jangly with anxiety. Much of the day hangs in suspense: Election Day has arrived, yet no news happens until the polls close. To fill the day, you will err by consulting social media, where wild rumors spread like grease fires. Some guy in Columbus will swear he saw an old Econoline van with MAGA and/or antifa stickers dumping ballots in the river. It will be retweeted nine million times, including, probably, by Elon Musk. By the late afternoon, a cold slick of flop sweat will cling to the back of your neck. You will certainly crave a stiff drink or seven to steady your nerves. This is the first pivotal moment of the night and here rookies often blunder.
Start with one stiff drink
Look, it’s going to be a long night. You’ve got to get a hold of yourself. Before the results start coming in (7pm Eastern/4p Pacific), put some soothing music on, retire to a comforting room, with other humans if they’re handy or perhaps a furry friend, and have a civilizing, centering moment to start the night. Pour yourself a double IPA or martini, and chat about your day. It’s cocktail time and you’re there to unwind. That’s it, relax.
Maintenance booze
Now it’s time to turn on the TV and boot up your favorite election tracking site. Bolts of electricity will begin shooting through your system, but you’ve managed their severity with the stiff drink. To temper the rising anxiety—with 1% reporting my candidate is trailing by 30 points!!!—you’re going to have to get an IV drip of booze going. Put away the martinis and IPAs—now you want something flavorful but low-alcohol like Guinness to keep you going. With each mouthful you can experience a little burst of happy distraction without losing your edge. Why is Florida STILL only reporting only 1%? It’s 2000 all over again isn’t it?!!
Pace yourself.
Surviving Inconclusive Results
Once 7/4pm rolls around, a new tranche of states closes every half hour. (Half hour? Yes, seriously. Why, Arkansas, why?) The cable networks live for this night because nothing delivers the rolling drama like an election. Networks have developed garish graphics and scored cornball music to accompany each state in which their models project a winner. Throughout the night you will hear this music (and grow to despise it), and it will signal a new explosion of pure adrenaline. Oh my @%#$& God, they called Vermont! VERMONT!!!
Look, we already know how forty of the states will go. Settle down. Have another Guinness.
Inkling Booze
This is our first post-Covid election, so eighty million people have already voted. That means in states like Wisconsin, volunteers are swimming in seas of ballots, slowly checking signatures, unsealing them, flattening them, and loading them into machines for counting. Results will be delayed. Nevertheless, you will be studying return data to see what the turnout in Dane County looks like, scrutinizing the totals for patterns and clues, hitting “refresh” approximately three times per second. Some young Ph.D. will be breathlessly interpreting fragmentary results on TV. Third-generation Cubans aren’t turning out in Tampa!!! Through this miasma, patterns will emerge. At a certain point, you’ll begin to have an inkling about how the election is going. This is another pivotal moment.
If you fear impending defeat, you’ll have the impulse to turn to the hard stuff. It offers succor—or oblivion—in its sharp bite. If you sense victory, conversely, you’re liable to start drinking faster, more jubilantly, probably turning to a specialty beer or glass of Pinot in your moment of unearned confidence.
Beware.
This year is going to be weird. Because of early voting, ballots are going to arrive in blocs. Traditionally, panicked Dems vote immediately, weeks before election day. When the early ballots go on the board, it will inject a false sense of momentum into the numbers. Republicans have tended to coolly wait until Election Day, eschewing the mail. These late results will separately, before or after the early batches, depending on the state. States count these clumps of ballots in different order (Michigan has already started counting early ballots, by law Pennsylvania had to wait until election day). This year, there’s evidence the Ds were the ones who waited, while the GOP got out early. And the behavior may have varied state by state. Your inkling may well be wrong, then, fools-gold amid the sands. Once you’ve committed yourself with those six desperation martinis or speedy IPAs, you will almost certainly find the results plunged back into confusion—and then it will be too late. You wouldn’t be the first one to pass out in exhausted inebriation too early, but no one wants the night to end that way.
Election Week
Honestly, we probably won’t know who won for days. Unless one of the candidates scores an unexpected landslide, we’ll wake up Wednesday morning (eventually) to news of incremental new counts in key states. More inconclusion.
As your Tuesday Night self watches the returns tonight, spare a thought for Wednesday Morning you. As much as you may want this damn thing to be over, there’s a really good chance it won’t be. Recall that in 2020, the networks didn’t call the election until Saturday. So when Wednesday arrives, consider how you want to feel. Horribly hung-over is no way to spend morning two of a several-day ordeal.
After a night of drinking, you might not make the most rational choices in the wee hours, but it might make sense to shift to water. This could be a long one, and, after all, you may need to start drinking again soon enough. Consider all your options.
Good luck folks, and in all seriousness, be safe.
Sharp-eyed readers with good memories may recognize this post, which I’ve reproduced, nearly verbatim, from 2020. That post turned out to be pretty dang prescient, however, and also great advice that I myself followed. So in what may be a tradition, I’ve reposted it this year.