Pictures & Videos from Last Night's Election Party

I should be taking a nap right now before tonight's bible study, but I figured that if I don't get these up soon, they won't really be nearly so interesting.

Setting: A big conference room in the student center in the middle of the largest student housing complex (Elm's Village). They had planned on 30 people, ended up with 100+. The room was packed with students wearing badges, signs, American flags, etc. While it was predominantly Obama fans, there were about a half-a-dozen or so of us McCain supporters - one guy even wearing a McCain t-shirt (which was brave, considering most of the people there were drinking & you never know what someone's going to do when you're wearing the oppositions colors and they're drunk). Their were American flag streamers around the room, BBC One's coverage was playing on the projector, CNN was on a small flat screen at the back of the room, and a map of the US was on the wall via an old-school overhead projector and students were filling in the states as the projections came in. So, with that, here's the pictures and videos:

From Election 2008

From Election 2008

From Election 2008

Cheers after Obama is projected to win a state.

From Election 2008

Counting down to the polls closing.

I hung around until about 1:30am or so and then headed the 20 min walk back to my place with some friends. The excitement of the night was fun - the crowd would countdown from 10 every time we were 10 seconds away from a poll closing and then boo/cheer when a candidates face came on screen as being projected to take a certain state.

I can't imagine US students getting so excited about the UK election or the German election...perhaps it says something about the great responsibility and burden the US bears as the torch bearer for the world. Whether they admit it or not, there is definitely this sense of "Let's wait and see what the US does" when it comes to economics or politics. In fact, todays news articles talk about how Obama's victory is bringing about a wave of minority voice in European politics - a place where minorities seem to rarely vote and an African (let alone any minority, I think) has never been elected to the highest office in the land.