So yesterday I was trying to figure out who actually won that big governor race here in Indiana. Kept seeing bits and pieces online, but man, it was like putting together a puzzle with half the pieces missing. Needed the full picture, you know?
Where I Started
First thing I did was grab my laptop, already half-cold coffee sitting there. Opened up like, five different news sites. Local, national, you name it. Expected a quick “here’s the winner” headline. Yeah, right. Everyone just repeated the same few lines. Frustrating.
Then I remembered the official Indiana elections site. Hopped over there thinking, “Okay, this has to have the final, certified results.” But navigating that thing? Felt like wandering through cornfields blindfolded. Clicked through county by county links forever. Slow loading, weird formatting.
The Nitty-Gritty Digging
Finally found the main results page for statewide offices. Scrolled down… and down… looking for Governor. Found it! Saw the names: Eric Holcomb, whoever ran against him. Listed the votes.
Here’s where my dumb habit kicked in. I needed to see the county breakdown too. Wanted to know who won where, by how much. So I started clicking individual county names. One after another. Monroe County. Marion County. Lake County. You get the idea.
- Opened each county’s results page.
- Copied the governor votes for Republican and Democrat.
- Pasted them into a huge, messy Google Sheet I made right then.
- Kept checking totals against the statewide number I saw earlier, making sure I wasn’t losing my mind.
Took ages. Seriously, my coffee went completely cold. But I got stubborn. Wanted to build my own little map of how the state voted.
The Details That Stuck Out
Once I had all my scrappy county data, some patterns popped.
- Big counties like Marion (Indianapolis) went heavy Democrat, no shock.
- But so many smaller counties? Solid Republican wins, like landslides.
- Turnout numbers in some rural areas seemed surprisingly high compared to what I expected.
- Found this one tiny county with almost perfect 50/50 split – that was weirdly fascinating.
And hey, the final statewide total confirmed it: Eric Holcomb won. Not really a nail-biter in the end, but seeing those county numbers told the real story of how he won. Urban vs. rural split was stark.
Wrap Up
So yeah, spent way too long piecing together what probably took someone at the Secretary of State’s office two minutes to compile. Lesson? Official state election sites have the gold, but you gotta mine for it yourself sometimes. Next election night? Maybe I’ll just wait for the morning news. Or maybe I’m lying to myself and I’ll be right back in that spreadsheet rabbit hole again.
