My Election Day begins at midnight with a heavy dose of uncertainty. I’m from New Hampshire, a state which prides itself on being early: we hold the first presidential primary in the nation, and we also cast the first votes of the general election. Up in Dixville Notch, a community just twenty miles south of the Canadian border, every registered voter in the township gathers in a miniature “Ballot Room” to ring in Election Day at midnight on the dot. This year, there are six voters total. 

I’m watching the Dixville Notch livestream from my dorm room in Vermont, while on a FaceTime call with my sister (this is a family tradition, after all). It is a bizarre spectacle. “The Star-Spangled Banner” is performed by a three-time world champion accordionist, there is a golden retriever wandering the room, and the ballot box is about the size of a filing cabinet—comically large for the six ballots it will soon hold. One by one, the voters disappear behind a brightly patriotic curtain. Counting their votes takes a matter of minutes.

Dixville Notch could not be less representative of the millions of Americans who will vote in the morning; I understand this well. Still, it is difficult to view the township’s election results without prophesying a bit, so I hope for a decisive outcome.

They display the results on a hand-drawn sign: three votes for Kamala Harris, three votes for Donald Trump. 

Sigh.

There is an air of tension on my college campus that has been building over the past few weeks. The election has snuck its way into most conversations, in-class and out. You would be hard-pressed to find a Trump supporter at my college: we have an overwhelmingly blue student body, so instead of discussing who deserves to win the election, we talk about our fear that Harris might lose. When we are audacious enough to envision a future where Harris is president, we like to wax poetic about the shortcomings of her policy, and the ways we intend to bring about change—but these days we are wary of jinxing that future, where leaders can be held accountable, so discussion rarely strays from the matter at hand.

Mentions of the election have been posted all over our anonymous social media app (we use Jodel, a derivative of the more popular Yik Yak). “Has anyone else had trouble with their mail-in ballots? They haven’t received mine,” writes one user. “Anyone else having a really hard time focusing on school with all the election stuff going on?” asks another. Along with free transportation to the polls (most of us already voted by mail, but this is an essential option nonetheless), my college is offering a yoga and mindfulness session tomorrow, and a series of “election support circles” throughout the week. 

As with many left-leaning liberal arts colleges, the relationship between our students and administration can be rocky, but on this topic we agree: the 2024 presidential election is stressful. We could all stand to take a breather.

Election results are being shown in one of our lecture halls from 9:00 PM to 8:00 AM. In an attempt to preserve my sanity, I harbor no intention of staying the whole time; but for each hour I spend watching, gathered with my peers in trepidation and fascination, I will document our experience as we hurtle toward a murky future.

7:00 to 8:00 PM Before heading to the lecture hall, I open my laptop and watch the first election results trickle in from the comfort of my dorm room. I focus my energy on staying calm and remembering that these initial projections for Trump—from Kentucky and Indiana—were expected. The map always goes red first. 

The day has felt shockingly normal, but there were subtle hints of this impending evening: my music theory professor began class with some relaxing music in an attempt to temper our election nerves with jazz. My literature professor sported an “I Voted” sticker, and I swapped anxieties with the student sitting next to me. After class, we parted with fingers crossed.

Between classes, I spent my time refreshing the news and trying to direct people toward the local polls on Jodel. I have heard from friends that some of their professors canceled classes today to alleviate some stress, but my day trudged along as usual. I have found myself grateful for the distraction; every moment spent waiting, including this one, seems to last forever. 

There are two early signs which inspire optimism in me: the first is exit polling, which shows that the state of democracy is a top issue for voters. I have spent much of my past semester learning about far-right attempts to dismantle democracy (utilizing disinformation campaigns, foreign interference, intimidation and violence), so the confirmation that this matters to other voters is deeply cathartic. The second comes when I see the projected results for Vermont—the state where I attend college—come through. That first flicker of blue on the map is small, but it’s something. 

I see a Women’s March Instagram post about the “Red Mirage” effect—wherein Republicans appear to be leading due to in-person ballots being counted before mail-in ballots—and take it as gospel, for my own sake. Trump is now the projected winner in ten states, as opposed to Harris’ eight.

9:00 PM I make my way to the watch party, in a little wooden building adjacent to our dining hall. It’s dimly lit and mostly deserted when I arrive: there are probably seven people in the room. This initial turnout is unsurprising to me, as I’ve been hearing nothing but disdain about the event (or, as a friend of mine put it, “I would rather eat glass than go to that”). Students at my college are more inclined toward small gatherings tonight; there’s something comforting about spending this particular Election Day among friends and family. I immediately find the snack table—piled with rice crisps, chips, fruit—and grab a couple bags to sustain me over the coming hours. PBS News is being projected on an enormous screen at the front of the room, behind an empty podium. 

My personal sense of dread has heightened, perhaps because I made the mistake of checking the New York Times live election forecast (that needle is leaning ominously toward the right side at present), or perhaps because 9:00 PM is a sort of “danger zone” on election night—when the truth comes out, when we begin to see results from key battleground states.

The room has begun to fill up and there is a nervous chatter hanging in the air, occasionally punctuated by exasperated laughter and greetings. Someone leads three young children into the room, which strikes me as a questionable choice. The snack bags crinkle. Someone says “I’m scared,” and I watch people check in on each other.

There are cries of no! and what? when Texas is called for Trump on the enormous screen, and boos when he wins Missouri. When Delaware is called for Harris, the room breaks into applause. Bernie Sanders, of course, earns an abundance of cheers for his Senate victory. The energy building in this room is not entirely hopeless.

Still: no counting our chickens before they hatch.

10:00 PM Around this time of night, I receive a message in my dorm Discord channel from one of the residents: they are setting up our common room as a “chill space” this evening, describing it as a zone for homework or crafts. There will be a movie playing in the background. The point is not to block out election results, they emphasize, but rather to take it slow. One exceptionally kind soul in my dorm has baked pumpkin muffins for the entire house, according to the photo I’ve just received, and left them in the kitchen along with a handwritten note reminding us to take care of ourselves.

A recent graduate of my college, William Greer, suddenly bursts into the lecture hall: he was running for Vermont State Representative, one of two Democratic nominees for Bennington-2 District. He’s dressed in a shiny white suit, smiling. Another student runs up the stairs to him, shouting: “You’ve won?” They embrace as Greer confirms—at twenty-one years old, he is a State Rep. It’s a fleeting moment—Greer is gone as fast as he came—but a bright one nonetheless. It is always heartening to watch other young people take office (especially when the median age of U.S. lawmakers is roughly fifty-eight in the House and sixty-five in the Senate, not to mention President Biden’s precipitous age), but doubly inspiring when it’s one of your peers doing so. I am hesitant to regard it as a good omen, but I do take it as a small victory.

Cheers and applause when Harris wins Colorado, again when she wins D.C.; groans when Trump takes Kansas. I am starting to learn that we must cheer every single time Bernie Sanders appears on-screen. I have begun to worry over Congress, naturally, with the House and Senate both erring toward the right. I crunch on my Fritos to try and compensate for this fear, looking nervously around the room, hoping my fellow students voted in their down-ballot races.

11:00 PM Over the past few weeks, I have repeatedly told the people in my life: “Sometimes I forget how close this election actually is—I’m always forgetting that Harris’ presidency is not a given.” As the hours drag on, I am reminded of this razor-thin margin, and it still astounds me: I am completely baffled that another Trump presidency is even possible, nevermind likely. 

When you’re a woman, it’s hard not to take it personally—that the U.S. might choose a rapist and convicted felon over a former Attorney General, Senator, and current Vice President. When you’re a woman, it’s difficult to avoid thinking: what else could women possibly do to prove ourselves worthy? If we are not ready for a woman president now, when will we be ready? I unearth no answers to these questions, of course. 

I know that gender is not the only caveat for many Trump voters, that race is an equally disqualifying factor in their eyes. The fact that the U.S. elected an almost eighty-year-old white man over Trump in 2020—something that was regarded as a necessary step toward the future—but might be unwilling to stomach a woman of color over Trump in 2024 is not unthinkable, but it is unconscionable. 

The room has started to clear out as we approach midnight, but the cheering for Harris has arguably become louder. We clap for Democratic Congress winners, too, despite knowing the Democrats have all but lost the Senate. I see the group in front of me feverishly checking maps of counties on their phones, or FaceTiming their friends and family: the situation has grown more dire, but the atmosphere is cautiously jovial.

12:00 AM If nothing else, at least we can be glad it’s not Election Day anymore. When the energy has died down and results look more unfavorable, I head back to my dorm. At around half past 12, I discover what remains of the common room watch party: there are three people huddled on the couches who have turned to Mary Poppins instead of election results, and I get it—a spoonful of sugar and all. When I ask how they’re feeling, they can’t bring themselves to answer past pained looks and a half-hearted “we’re feeling.” I take a pumpkin muffin on my way to my room. 

For this hour, I do not watch: instead, I hop on a call with my friends from back home, in New Hampshire, and we spend time together, doing anything else.

1:00 AM Going to bed is not an appealing prospect, but everyone pretends to anyway. At this point, I wonder if we’re not waiting for the other shoe to drop—I watch Trump overtake more counties in battleground states and let go of any notion that Harris can eke out a victory. “I got my hopes up so high,” says my sister, “I’m so sad.”

2:00 AM Pennsylvania goes to Trump and even the news anchors admit it’s over. I wait for Trump to speak while I get ready for bed, because this is still college. I still have a meeting early tomorrow morning that I can’t miss.

I watch Trump’s speech in West Palm Beach. He boasts about how J.D. Vance happily obeys his every command, drones on about Elon Musk’s spaceships, says that God spared his life for this divine purpose. Harris wins Minnesota by the end of the speech, but it doesn’t matter: our fate has been sealed.

Tomorrow there will be time to regroup, plan, and figure out how we’ll cope—because we will cope. For now I must turn off the news at long last.

I woke up this morning with the intrinsic urge to go outside and reconnect with nature, to remember that this is ultimately a passing phase. Here in Vermont, however, it's 71 degrees—my weather app tells me this is 25 degrees higher than average for November.

I received texts from friends who spent the night crying, and friends completing a semester overseas, who just heard the results within the past few hours; my social media feed is flooded with the same tweet reading “supporting a convicted felon over a woman is fucking insane”; a few of my relatives are posting about how they’re proud to be American regardless of these results, how “hate has no place in our future,” and I can’t help but think that hate has a very tangible place in our future now. 

When I went to the dining hall, I heard the student on card swipe saying good morning to each person and then quickly taking it back: well, not a good morning, but. As I left my meeting, one of my professors remarked that we must figure out how to survive the next four years. 

There is fear, of course: for the fate of reproductive healthcare, for immigration, for global welfare. I spend a large portion of the day feeling angry, and I take this with what gratitude I can muster, because I know anger goes a lot further than apathy. I think about how most of the U.S. still hates women more than it hates white supremacy, imperialism, and environmental catastrophe, and I am not surprised. I decide to go home for the next few days (mercifully, I don't have classes), so I end up listening to Harris’ concession speech on the car radio, and that’s when the regret hits: this keen sense of all that could have been. 

This is why I will not resort to cynicism: I have been given excellent role models, and I plan to listen to them. Today I think about a lecture I attended at my college a month ago, where the renowned author and journalist David Rohde spoke. When asked how he planned to reckon with a second Trump presidency, he answered: “Bring it on. I’m not going to move to Canada and give up…it’s going to be an enormous change in how we work. I’ll be spending a lot more time in Washington.”

I think about the final lines of American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power by the investigative journalist Andrea Bernstein, who was one of my professors this past semester: “I don’t think that hope is just a feeling state. I think that hope is a choice that you make…the act of telling the story is itself an action, a chance, a tilt toward the future.”

I think about the philosophy of Hannah Arendt, whose work I’ve been studying in one of my classes, and how she refers to truth in her essay “Truth and Politics” as something foundational and ultimately unimpeachable: “Conceptually, we may call truth what we cannot change; metaphorically, it is the ground on which we stand and the sky that stretches above us.” 

I think about Harris’ concession speech. I was especially moved by her address to young people like myself: “You have power, and don’t you ever listen when anyone tells you something is impossible because it has never been done before. You have the capacity to do extraordinary good in the world. And so to everyone who is watching, do not despair. This is not a time to throw up our hands. This is a time to roll up our sleeves.”

More than anything, I think about something my friend wrote in a text this morning: “This is such a terrible outcome, but if anything, I hope it strengthens radical solidarity and love as we figure out how to exist under these conditions.” Indeed, along with fear and heartbreak, the second reaction I have observed in the wake of these election results is love—in the form of text messages, muffins, Jodel posts, a late-night celebration for Bennington District’s latest State Rep. These small acts of mutual compassion make me confident that we will find the resolve to push onwards. To my fellow young people: turn to your role models, then turn to each other. The most radical and necessary tool in the face of such adversity is your hope.