Firstly, this is not a political blog, but an overview of how I spent election night. I’ll never forget election night 2016, as it was the ending of a very negative campaign season. I don’t think I’ve spent a presidential election night on the road before. I was on a load from Galveston, TX to Philadelphia, PA. As the sun went down, the rain set in and I arrived in Baton Rouge around 5pm, which guaranteed that I would be delayed a couple of hours. Sure enough, all of the negative forces converged on Baton Rouge and wrecks started to happen. The delays were so bad on Interstate 10, that I felt sure people would miss voting in the election.
Thankfully, I finally made it out Louisiana and onto Mississippi.
I found a closed weigh station that allowed parking and pulled in to spend the night. I listened intently to my XM radio as the state vote totals rolled in to see who my next president would be. It reminded me of the old days of gathering around the radio to hear big news. All of the pundits were setting the stage for Hillary to win. As the polls continued to close from east to west, the results were very surprising to the pundits. They assured the viewers (and listeners) that these surprising results were in no way a clue for how the rest of the night would go. But soon after, as more states were called for Trump, it was clear as to which way the tide was turning.
I went to bed before the election was called because I knew who was going to win based on the many swing states that went for Trump. I’ve watched enough of these over the years to understand what indicators to look for. I woke up the next morning and checked my smart phone for any news updates that came in during the night. As expected, at 2:47 am EST, an alert sent to my phone said that Trump is elected president of the United States.