No matter who Americans cast a ballot for, election anxiety seems inescapable this year, exacerbated by razor-thin races in key swing states, the specter of another Donald Trump campaign effort to overturn the results and increasingly violent political rhetoric. Based on conversations among Times staffers, though, at least one contributing factor has been underappreciated: time.
Meaning, the amount of time it took for Joe Biden to be declared the winner in 2020. The amount of time we spent glued to TV news and social media watching the results trickle in. The amount of time we spent on tenterhooks, uncertain what might happen next.
If there’s one silver lining to a repeat performance, it’s that election night turning into election week won’t be quite so “unprecedented.” (Good news for those who’ve come to hate that word in recent years.) To help you navigate the 2024 edition, we asked a group of writers and editors from The Times to look back on each day of election week 2020, from the rise of the “chartthrobs” to Four Seasons Total Landscaping, and try to identify what lessons we might apply this time around.
So, here’s the L.A. Times guide to surviving election week 2024. Godspeed.