Over the last 25 years, Americans have regularly found themselves up into the early morning hours waiting for news organizations to make the decisive call of the last state needed to put a presidential candidate in the White House, and to learn who controls Congress.
A moment like this on election night in 2000 led to our common language of Republican states as red states and Democratic states as blue states, as the US watched the Meet the Press host Tim Russert on NBC talk late through the night about what was happening in Florida.
