A bunch of people are going to write guides on what to watch on Election Night, highlighting key races and providing a guide to interpreting early results. Many of them are good and you should go read those. I’m quite partial to Daily Kos’ map of poll closing times and FiveThirtyEight’s guide to the timing of election results.
This is not one of those guides. Instead, I will tell you how to handle Election Day - the greatest data void in all of politics.
We won’t know anyhing meaningful until 6 PM Eastern, when Indiana and Kentucky start reporting results. There will be anecdotal turnout reports and early exit polls, both of which you should ignore. (Official turnout reports are marginally more useful, but difficult to interpret.) Pundits will yammer on all day to fill time on cable news networks and social media, but this is even more worthless than anecdotal turnout reports. If you value your sanity, leave your preferred news network off until we have actual results.
So what should an elections nerd do instead? Glad you asked. Here’s a list.
Vote if you haven’t already! (I would hope this one would be obvious, but Always Be GOTVing.)
If you have a job outside of politics and are scheduled to work Tuesday, Election Day is a good day to focus on it and get as much done as you can. Earn some brownie points in advance of nervously refreshing results sites for tight races Wednesday and onwards instead of working.
Help work at voting precincts on Election Day or counting ballots after. If you do this, you have my undying respect. It can be a dull job, but it’s critical to making democracy work. Thank you all.
Volunteer for campaigns you support doing last-minute Get Out The Vote (GOTV) pushes, but take my advice on this - you want the morning and afternoon shifts. Evening Election Day GOTV shifts are miserable. You will mostly be reaching people who have already voted and are extremely angry that you’re interrupting their dinner and leisure time after they already did their civic duty. Do not do this to yourself. Learn from past me’s mistakes.
If there are long lines to vote in your area, bring water and snacks to people waiting in line. This isn’t a cure-all, but it’s a kindness and can help encourage people to stay in line. (Unless you’re in Georgia, which has literally made this illegal because Brian Kemp doesn’t want too many of you voting.)
Go to your therapy appointment. Whether you want to focus on your long-term goals or just kinda vibrate with anxiety about the upcoming elections results with your (hopefully sympathetic) therapist is up to you.
Schedule something like a massage, float tank visit, or other spa visit during the day (or the evening before). Maybe you’ll get mental and/or physical health benefits from it, some people do. But even if you don’t, at least you can’t watch the news or check social media for an hour, and that alone is worth the price of admission.
Drink. Ideally not in combination with the other items on this list, but you do you.
Literally anything other than obsessing over early exit polls and anecdotal turnout reports. I’m not exaggerating about how worthless they are. Exit polls are designed to be weighted to actual results, so we can try to examine how various groups voted, and they’re valuable (though still imperfect) after the fact. But early exit polls aren’t weighted and cannot achieve that goal. Go have a nice meal, play a game, try to figure out what microblogging site we’re all moving to once Elon Musk burns Twitter to the ground, or run naked down the street for all I care. Any and all of these are more worthwhile than reading early exit polls.
Happy GOTV weekend and Election Day, and may the best candidates win. See you on the other side.