On Election Night, my husband and I allowed the children to stay up and watch the results of the election roll in state by state. We had taken them with us to the voting precinct that morning and we had been talking with them about who the candidates were, what issues we had concerns about and who we wanted to win.
We referred to this C-SPAN Electoral Map throughout the night.
I printed out some great materials for that night: an electoral map which shows how many electoral votes each state gets and a US map coloring page, which they could color in red or blue as the results were announced. We also watched a video with Grover and Sal Khan, which explains the Electoral College for children.
They went to bed around 11pm and we continued coloring the map the following morning. As of today, they are still counting votes in Michigan, so we are not finished with the project.