Periodic, and especially relevant reminder, from someone who has worked a *lot* of TV election shows, the minute-by-minute drama is entirely manufactured. It's not like a football game or a horse race. The outcome has already been decided.

It's OK to not follow it second-by-second.

Our TV station used to make a huge deal of election coverage, and it was great TV with results slowly trickling in as ballots were hand-counted. Later, as more ballots were counted electronically, results came in faster, and sucked all the drama out of it.

But nothing had actually changed in the voting process, really. It just became harder and harder to make it look like a horse race.