Day: November 5, 2024

When Did Election Night Become A Thing?

My final thought on the voting…..it comes from…. Eugene Debs: “I’d rather vote for something I want and don’t get it, than vote for something I don’t want and get it.”  (now you see why I have not voted for a winner since 1976)

A little more history can not hurt.

Tonight there will be families glued to the TV in anticipation of the vote count for president…..some will rejoice and some will lament.

As usual I have a question….when did election night become this all encompassing thing?

And the answer is….

On the night of Tuesday, November 4, 1952, Americans across the nation gathered around their television sets to follow the results of the presidential race between Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower and Democrat Adlai Stevenson. That year, a television could be found in roughly one-third of U.S. households—compared with less than 1 percent in 1948—and politicians were just beginning to experiment with TV as a communication tool.

Many Americans were experiencing election night as they never had before. News networks would be announcing the next president live on TV. Adding to the anticipation: NBC and CBS planned to use new computer forecasting technologies to predict the results based on early returns. 

“It was the first real national television campaign with TV ads and then election night coverage,” says Richard Craig, professor of journalism and mass communication at San José State University and author of Polls, Expectations and Elections: TV News Making in U.S. Presidential Campaigns. “It turned it into much more of a televised event.”

By the 1950s, in an era of rapid technological innovation following World War II, TVs were rapidly making their way into American households. Ninety percent of households would own one by 1960. 

When TV news networks broadcasted election returns in 1948, they reached a much smaller audience than in the years to follow. A lot went wrong for the media that election night, says Ira Chinoy, author of Predicting the Winner: The Untold Story of Election Night 1952 and the Dawn of Computer Forecasting and associate professor emeritus at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism. 

First, TV news organizations’ were criticized for their lackluster presentation of the election returns. Reporters essentially recited the latest vote counts and hand-wrote them on chalkboards. Plus, Chinoy says, many journalists went into 1948 election night expecting that Republican Thomas Dewey would defeat Democratic incumbent Harry S. Truman as the pollsters predicted, in what became an embarrassing moment for the news stations. (This was also an issue in print journalism, leading to the infamous “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline published on the front page of the Chicago Tribune.)

https://www.history.com/news/1952-election-night-television-computers

Now you know what brought on this desire to sit up all night waiting for the election results.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Remember The 5th Of November

I believe that this date, 05 November 2024 will be remembered, at least for awhile, because of the social implications of the election.

Today is election day and most people, that I know, are planning to go out and vote and it will be an ordeal or so they say…..there probably will not be much traffic on my blog today as people make their way to the polls.

But this day has been remembered for many years.

What better time for a little history?

Because of this I shall drop a little history on you……

‘Remember, remember the fifth of November.’

On this date in 1605, a group of conspirators attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament and everyone inside them. Since the State Opening was to occur on this day, it would have led to the death of King James I of England and VI of Scotland, as well as pretty much the entirety of the government.

But why, exactly, did Robert Catesby, Guy Fawkes and the other conspirators aspire to commit such a diabolical act?

Late 16th and early 17th century Europe was a veritable powder keg of religious frictions (please pardon the pun). Corruption within the Catholic Church had led to the rise of Protestant ideals even before Henry VIII upended the religious situation in England by divorcing Catherine of Aragon and declaring himself as Supreme Head of the Church of England in the 1530s.

Henry was succeeded on the throne by his son Edward (a Protestant), Mary (a Catholic) and eventually Elizabeth I (a Protestant again). Under her reign, England eventually became the leading Protestant power in Europe – but that led to rising tensions with a number of Catholic countries, most notably Spain.

The execution of Elizabeth’s cousin Mary Queen of Scots in 1587 and the failed invasion of the Spanish Armada the following year were huge events that shaped the political and religious climate at the time. Many Catholics were persecuted (around 100 priests were executed during Elizabeth’s reign) and religious intolerance was rife.

When Elizabeth I died without children, the Scottish King James VI came to London to assume the English throne as James I in 1603. Given that he was the son on Mary Queen of Scots (a devout Catholic), and that his wife Anne of Denmark was also Catholic, there were high hopes that he would take a more lenient view.

https://www.history.co.uk/articles/why-did-they-try-to-blow-up-the-houses-of-parliament

A fascinating plot and worthy of a look.

If any of my British visitors have anything to add please give me and my readers the heads up.

I am so tired of the voices of the candidates and their surrogates that my ears want to bleed….time to get on with it and let the chips fall where they may.

As you go out to vote please be careful and be safe.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”