For months, political experts have warned we might not know the outcome of the race for days, even weeks. It's a reminder of the 2000 US presidential election, when it took 36 days and a court challenge to declare a winner.
TV networks mistakenly projected Democrat Al Gore had beaten Republican George W Bush.
They withdrew their assertion an hour later. Washington DC think tank the Brookings Institute said Bush ultimately garnered the presidency " ... when a sharply divided and transparently political Supreme Court ended the manual recount in Florida that might have produced a different outcome".
Brooking's Thomas Mann wrote, "It was the closest presidential election in American history, with several hundred votes in Florida determining the winner out of more than 100 million ballots cast nationwide."
Make that modern American history - other scholars point to two elections in the 1800s with slimmer margins.
The surprise of the 2020 US election wasn't that we'd wait to learn who won, but the fact the race is close at all. I had hoped Wednesday would be a repudiation of Trump, a fusing of folks who realised 2016 had been a giant mistake.
Instead, around 69 million Americans voted for the Don.
I stopped believing in pre and post-election polls after the 2016 race, when Democrat Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but lost the electoral college to Trump. Before the election, political site FiveThirtyEight predicted Clinton had a 71 per cent chance of winning.
A day before the current election, the New York Times reported several pollsters canvassing likely voters in Pennsylvania the past week found Biden ahead by five to seven percentage points.
In reality, margins are razor-thin.
As American Christian pastor John Pavlovitz wrote, "The inaccuracy of the polls tells us that a substantial portion of this country doesn't want to admit they vote for abject racists. If you're embarrassed in advance by your choice, it's probably a terrible choice - or you're a terrible person."
The mood in our house was grim Wednesday night as we watched PBS TV online. Miss 16 cried, "I've been waiting four years for Trump to get out!"
Wednesday felt like 2016 all over again, only worse. Back then, I cut Trump voters slack. Maybe he'd act like a president once in office. Maybe he wouldn't use the position to enrich himself and his family.
He'd stop tweeting and calling people names. He'd be more respectful of women and minorities. He'd listen to advisors and experts. NO - x 5.
Things got exponentially worse.
His bullying escalated. He was impeached on charges he abused his power and obstructed Congress in its investigation of his dealings with Ukraine. He called women "bleeding" and "nasty".
He refused to disavow white supremacists and said, after the deadly neo-Nazi rally in Virginia, there were "good people on both sides". He told another white power group during the first presidential debate last month to "Stand back and stand by."
Trump has ordered migrant children to be separated from their parents at the Mexican border. Anyone with half a brain in his administration has quit or been fired.
And, oh yes - more than a quarter of a million Americans have died of Covid-19. Trump's pandemic plan is to fire the country's top infectious disease specialist and wait for a vaccine.
None of this matters to Trump supporters. For them, abuse of power is politics as usual. Misogyny is brushed off as "locker room talk".
Trump didn't really mean to call skinheads "good people".
The migrants had it coming. And most coronavirus deaths happened to old or fat people, so they don't really count. Also, "JY-na." The virus came from China. Not Trump's fault.
If there's one thing authoritarians excel at, it's stoking fear. I believe the US election is close because so many Americans have swallowed Trump's bitter pill. They fear immigrants; higher taxes; strong women; "the left"; socialism.
They fear women with agency over their fertility. They believe abortion at any stage is wrong, but allowing people to die during a pandemic is fine. As Bill Clinton said, "It's the economy, stupid."
Scared Americans buy guns. Firearm sales have hit a new high in the US. The running joke is Republicans would vote for a monkey if he had an "R" before his name.
The nerves in our house are starting to subside. I tell my tribe to count their blessings - whether our guy wins or loses, we have each other. We have a roof, healthcare access, a dog, food ... and New Zealand. Thank goodness for that.
