1932–1968

Election Nights

The country counts itself out loud

Election night is the one story radio was built for: it runs all night, nobody knows the ending, and the pictures are useless. American networks discovered this in 1920, when KDKA read Harding's returns off a telephone line, and by 1932 the whole apparatus existed — pool feeds from the ballrooms, correspondents at the candidates' hotels, a studio anchor holding the country's hand until dawn. What survives is lopsided. Concessions survive because they are short and quotable; the long hours of returns rarely do. So the shelf runs from Hoover in Elko, Nevada, to a Nixon rally recorded by Pacifica eight days before the 1968 vote, by way of the Houston ministers, the first debate and two Stevenson concessions delivered with better jokes than either winner managed.

32 recordings · 12 broadcasters