How to Get Through Election Week 2024: An Everyday Guide

Regardless of who Americans voted for, election anxiety seems inevitable this year. It is compounded by razor-thin contests in key swing states, the specter of another attempt by Donald Trump to overturn the results, and increasingly violent political rhetoric. But according to conversations between Times staffers, at least one factor was underestimated: time.

That is, how much time it took for Joe Biden to be declared the winner of 2020. How much time we spent watching TV news and social media to track the results. How much time we spent in suspense, uncertain about what might happen next.

If there's a silver lining to a repeat performance, it's that election night becomes an election Week will not be quite as “unprecedented”. (Good news for those who have hated that word for the past few years.) To help you navigate the 2024 edition, we asked a group of Times writers and editors to look back at each day of election week 2020 to discover the rise of the “Chartthrobs” on Four Seasons Total Landscaping and try to figure out what lessons we could apply this time.

So here's the LA Times' guide to getting through election week 2024. Good luck.