Well, this is awkward.
Ed Gillespie, the Republican nominee in Virginia’s gubernatorial race, appears to have preemptively changed his Twitter settings in anticipation of winning Tuesday night’s election so that balloons appeared on his profile.
The problem is, he lost.
Gillespie fell to Democrat Ralph Northam on Tuesday night, losing by a large margin. (The final vote totals are not available as of publication.) Despite this, Gillespie’s team appears to have changed the candidate’s Twitter profile to make his birthday Nov. 7, which would trigger the balloon animation to appear for anyone who visits his profile page.
To be fair, the election between Gillespie and Northam was a virtual dead heat when the polls opened on Tuesday morning, with Northam holding a narrow lead that fell within most polls’ margins of error.
The Virginia race for governor was one of the most anticipated elections on Tuesday night due to the state’s bipartisan tendencies. Virginia has voted for Democrats in the past three presidential elections but voted for Republicans between 1980 and 2004. The Virginia race was largely seen as a referendum on President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress.
With Northam’s win, as well as wins in New Jersey and elsewhere around the country, Democrats appear to be bursting Republicans’ bubble.
H/T Eric Geller