US election night. Democratic events like elections only work if everyone involved thinks they’re doing the same thing. But this time the electorate don’t seem to have the same idea of what an election is – what each side seems to want to achieve through the process is so different, beyond simple differences in policy or ideology, that they can’t be thinking about it in the same way. One side is committed to the adjudication of differences through institutions, in good faith: the other is committed to being heard, to having their sense of grievance legitimised, to making trouble for the people that get in their way, to feeling powerless. Is it possible, in these circumstances, to win in a game only one of you is playing? Can you play two different games on the same pitch?

Whoever is eventually assigned the victory, in whatever contested or violent circumstances, the message being given to their supporters will not be ‘more people agreed with your candidate’ but ‘that’s right, this is what we were about, not whatever the others thought we were doing’. On a smaller scale, the Brexit referendum had the same quality, with one side (generally) supporting institutions, and the other (generally) supporting the primacy of affect and feeling. The problem is that the idea of elections belongs to only one side, here – you can’t have a vote on whether or not voting is a good thing. A public sphere, democratic systems, these rely on some ideas being accepted by both sides and placed outside the contest. Once you start calling these into question, real change becomes terrifyingly possible.