Laugh at me if you will, but I watched the last season and a half of The West Wing. Mainly because I wanted to see if all of the rumors were true that a Republican would win the White House on the show. Of course Hollywood didn’t let that happen, but it was pretty intersting to say the least.
The brief synopsis is this:
The Democrat who wins the election, Matt Santos (played by Jimmy Smits) practically came out of nowhere to win the nomination. He was a minority candidate, very young, not a lot of Washington experience, and won a huge following. On election night in the show, he picked off South Carolina and Texas, traditionall red states, however he was a Congressman from Texas. He ran on a pretty moderate platform in the general election, with the exception of universal healthcare.
His Republican opponent was an old guy named Arnold Vinnick, a senator from California (played by Allan Alda). Vinnick was old, a moderate Republican, old, a senator for several years, old, and was doing very well in the polls up until an incident at a nuclear reactor tilted the election in Santos’ way. He did wind up winning California in a close race, mainly because it was his home state. The election was a lot closer than this year’s, with Santos clinching the win in a close victory in Nevada. Vinnick immediately concedes out of concern for dragging the country in an electoral fiasco.
I understand that this election wasn’t nearly as close as in the TV show, but there are some striking similarities. There was one especially at the end of the series.

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