Why Super Bowl 51 Feels Just Like Election Night

At the start of the 2017 Super Bowl it seemed like the Atlanta Falcons had it in the bag, but the New England Patriots have made an incredible comeback to tie up the game — and it's giving fans flashbacks to another big night that took place just about four months ago. While many are currently struggling to remember how to breathe, others are making "funny" tweets about how the Super Bowl is the election all over again. And if you thought it was too soon to go there, well, the answer is yes. (But did you seriously think that was going to stop Twitter?)

The Atlanta Falcons were the favored team to win the Super Bowl, if not by statistics than just by the sure fact that most Americans wanted the Falcons to win. For various different reasons, the only people who seemed to be rooting for the Patriots were people from New England, which is why it was incredibly devastating to see the Falcons come so close to winning the Super Bowl for the first time only to lose at the very end.

The loss felt way too similar to the moment Americans watched Hillary Clinton lose the presidential election to Donald Trump, hence why Twitter just had to capitalize on people's wounded feelings:

Of course, people immediately went to making jokes about the popular vote versus the Electoral College. For those who have already blissfully forgotten, here's a painful reminder that Clinton won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College vote. The ending of the election was eerily similar to how the Falcons were winning the first half, but in the end, lost the game.

Fans also couldn't help but ask if the Russians had possibly hacked the Super Bowl somehow. Ever since Trump won the presidency, the legitimacy of the election has been called into question, with many believing the Russians hacked the votes. Though the claims have ultimately been denied by both Trump and Russia, that hasn't stopped people from making multiple jokes about it.

Then there were the jokes about how everyone was sure the Falcons would win, just like how the media was "sure" Clinton would win. This is yet another devastating loss no one was expecting, which made it hurt even more.

Overall, fans just couldn't help but see the Super Bowl as a metaphor for the 2016 election, no matter how hard they tried not to. It was like reliving the hurt all over again, and this time around? Well, no one signed on to relive this kind of pain.

Is it 2018 yet?