7 November 2024

Staying up all night for elections used to be fun. But not any more

Perhaps it is the weariness of age, or that it’s hard to find optimism in politics these days.

Was I still up for Portillo? I may well have been, but I don’t remember – I had only recently turned five – and even if I was, I am certain it was not to watch the landslide roll. It took me another decade to cultivate that particular habit: in 2008, aged 16, I stayed up all night for my first election, to watch Barack Obama win the White House.

I was only a couple of months into studying for my politics A-level, a half-adult who, on the one hand, found the term “mandate” funny, and on the other went around seriously saying things like “bellwether”, “swing state” and “Philadelphia” to friends who still much preferred making up dance routines to “Mambo No 5” and learning the Kevin G rap from Mean Girls. (Yes, I still know every word.) I sat watching CNN, the volume turned all the way down and the blue light of my laptop screen illuminating my otherwise dark bedroom so as not to wake my mother, and ate an entire packet of chocolate Hobnobs. The next morning, I bounded into college, high on biscuits and the sheer excitement of progress, only to be greeted by the utter indifference of my peers. One did, however, buy me an “Obama is my homeboy” T-shirt for Christmas that year, which may have been a joke at my expense, but which I nonetheless earnestly wore as pyjamas until about a year ago.

Further all-nighters followed: the 2010 UK election, after which my politics class bet Haribo sweets on who would go into coalition. For the Scottish independence referendum in 2014 I trialled a new system, setting alarms every hour on the hour through the night so I could keep abreast but still get some sleep. This turned out to be the worst of all worlds: poor sleep, poor election-night vibes. For the Brexit count, I began the night with my flatmates, in turns roaring and groaning, like my father used to while watching the football at the pub. I suppose it was, in a way, my sport. One by one, my flatmates retired, until finally I did too, still clutching my laptop and determined to see it through, only to be rudely awoken by Nigel Farage’s victory lap at 4am.

With time, I extended the tradition to the Oscars, too, which proved far easier to entice friends along to. We provided a five-star service, complete with a coffee and Red Bull station, score cards for everyone to make their predictions and two dinners provided at 7pm and 1am: traditionally, fajitas followed by lasagne. In 2017 I walked off in a huff to the bathroom to get ready for bed the second La La Land was announced as Best Picture, blithely ignoring my friend D—as he banged on the bathroom door to say Warren Beatty had made a mistake. All those hours awake, only to be on the loo for one of the most dramatic moments in Oscars history…

So when my mother texted me this week to ask if I would be staying up for the US election, it gave me pause. I didn’t stay up for Labour’s win in July, and I probably won’t stay up on 5 November either. The last time I pulled an all-nighter was for Biden vs Trump in 2020. How different life looked then: A— and I made a crumble at 2am, and didn’t worry about being tired in the morning because those were Covid days and we hadn’t seen the inside of an office for the best part of a year.

Perhaps it is simply the weariness of age, or that I find it hard to find cause for optimism in politics these days. “The sheer excitement of progress” – what an alien phrase. But I think it is also partly that when I left working in women’s magazines to take a job at the New Statesman, I started making money out of something I once did purely for fun, and took some of the fun out of it in the process. It’s the reason I abandoned my fledgling baking blog the moment making croissants began to feel a chore, and wave aside any suggestion that I might turn sewing into a “side hustle”. Perhaps it is too late to reclaim the joy of the election all-nighter, but there is still fun to be had in the lamination of dough, or the thrum of a sewing machine. Wholesome, daylight fun.