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On the Tuesday after the first Monday in November 2016, I was coaching my daughter’s hockey team as the presidential ballots were being counted.
I’ll never forget the reaction of her teammates as they stood before the big-screen TV showing a promising trendline for Donald Trump: a collective “eww” filled the arena lobby.
They may have only been 13, but they knew enough to understand a candidate who had bragged about grabbing women by the genitals was on his way to grabbing the keys to the White House.
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After getting home from the rink, it was a night filled with countless calls to my night editor while watching the returns — and the clock, as deadline for our print edition loomed. I stayed up late enough to see Trump’s victory speech, which was way too late to make our front page.
“The Trump effect: Polarizing election puts reality-TV star inches from the White House as his wave of anger upsets Hillary Clinton’s attempt to make history” was our A1 headline on what was still far from an official result.
This was clearly different from 2008, when Barack Obama’s historic win came early enough for us to give readers a front-page taste of his victory speech.
But nor was it like 2020, when the presidential drama dragged on for days. “LONG NIGHT, LONGER WAIT,” was our A1 headline from the contest that eventually tipped in favour of Joe Biden.
Free Press front pages from previous U.S. elections. Want to have a closer look? Click through to PDF files for 2008, 2016, and 2020.
For the Tuesday after the first Monday in November 2024, the deadline we’ve set for print is 11:30 p.m. I fully expect nothing will be clear by that time, perhaps not even a trendline.
But I do know there’s no reason to fear a “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline, the erroneous front page from 1948 that still haunts the Chicago Tribune.(The Free Press did get that one right.)
In 1948, we called it correctly. (“Dopesters all wrong!”) See the full page
In the online age, the Free Press never really goes to bed, never really sleeps. Whenever Trump or Kamala Harris move past the the magic number of 270 electoral college votes – whether that is at 4 a.m. on Nov. 6 or a week later – that story will be immediately live on our website.
In an age in which everything seems to move faster and faster, maybe we should take some comfort in the fact that getting democracy right isn’t always going to conform to newspaper deadlines.
I mention the importance of getting democracy right because I fully recognize not only the stakes in this presidential election, but also the threat of intimidation and violence at voting stations, the misinformation and disinformation that will be swirling during ballot count, the legal challenges to come, and — heaven help us — the possibility of a repeat of the Jan. 6 insurrection.
As it turns out, as the polls close across the United States, I will be back at the same hockey rink — but this time as a player, not a coach.
When I get home, I’ll be watching to see if my daughter’s reaction to the results on our big-screen TV will be more favourable than the one I witnessed in 2016.
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