This was supposed to be last week’s My D.C. post, but, well, I didn’t get to it. But since this week was the Potomac Primary, it was just as accurate this week as last for the area.

I thought I’d highlight something I’d never given any thought to before I moved down here: election return watch parties. Sure, I’d heard of campaigns having parties to await poll returns, but I didn’t associate it with something mere mortals do.

But here in D.C., politics is sport and is followed by regular folks in the same way they follow the Redskins and the Nationals (and with more interest than the local NHL franchise). So when days like this Tuesday and last (the Potomac Primary and Super Tuesday) roll around, people trickle into bars as the polls close to follow “the big game.”

D.C. is the only place I’ve been where CNN is just as likely to be on the bar tv as ESPN. Sweetpea, John, Susan, Rudi, and I headed to Sweetpea’s favorite local Cap Hill dive, Trusty’s to watch results trickle in. Half the tvs were tuned to CNN; the other half were divided between basketball and hockey games.

Rudi, Sweetpea, and Susan all own iPhones, so they quickly hopped online to pull down results as they were updated. We hung out for more than three hours, drinking beer from Mason Jars, snacking, reminiscing (we all met during Howard Dean’s failed presidential bid last time around), and forecasting how the campaigns would progress. Sarah and I knit. And all around the city, people were doing exactly the same thing.