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.
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