Election Day in Brazil

"Who do you think is going to win?" 

" Have you voted?"

" Who did you vote for?"

From folks at Pixel to the hotel staff, these are three of the most common questions I was asked during the day by any Paulista who knew I was from the U.S. or who cared about our politics.

For the first time in my 14 years of living in the U.S., I was able to answer a resounding "YES!" to the “Did you vote?” question. The only thing I am missing is the “I am a Georgia Voter” sticker that I have been coveting for many years- so I would appreciate it if one of my Georgia friends would save me one.

Election night here was pretty low key. I expected most of the expats staying in my hotel to gather for a mini watching party at the bar/lounge, but when I came downstairs around midnight (9:00 EST), the bar was desolate. In fact, it was closed. So I resigned to watch it alone my mini apartment. Just for laughs and giggles, I scrolled down every single channel to get a sense of what kind of coverage the election was getting and I was pretty impressed to find 6 out of about 60 channels had coverage. Please don’t judge me, I was just trying to have some fun. Here are the six channels:

J10 – Brazilian

Globao  - Brazilian

BandNews - Brazilian

BBC – British

TVMonde - French

Bloomberg – U.S.A

CNN – U.S.A

At 2:18am (11:18pm EST) Wolf Blitzer made the call that President Obama will have another four years. Who I voted for takes a back seat to the fact that I can exercise my right freely a citizen of this great country.