Used to be, when you went down to Golden Hall (map) on election night, the air was electric from the moment the first numbers came out until well after midnight. There was a steady stream of results that came out every 20 or 30 minutes, and the tension mounted as the evening wore on. There was no big screen with numbers scrolling electronically down it. Instead, harried poll workers would appear from behind the curtains with stacks of printed rundowns. They handed them out to equally harried reporters, and then hastily filled in the results on a big white board with felt tip pens. Sometimes they had hardly finished writing in one set of results before the new ones had arrived.

But this year, after the first flush of mail-in ballot results arrived just after 8 p.m., there was nothing to feed the mounting speculation until nearly 11 o'clock. The crowds in Golden Hall and the related campaign hubs in nearby hotels and bars had thinned out considerably by the time the first precinct results of the day came in. It's just not the same when you have to wait so late for the returns to trickle in!