At 11 p.m. on election night, Nathalie Borden ’27 pulled out a homemade bingo card.
“These are hoping for the best, [but] not hoping for much more,” Borden said, pointing to squares that read “Wisconsin goes blue” and “arson.” “My safer predictions were Harris winning the popular vote, [and] I’m gunning for a blue Pennsylvania.”
On Nov. 5, 2024, Borden joined students at the Government Department watch party in the Frank Center for Public Affairs (PAC). In addition to the department-sponsored event, the student-run political coalition Wesleyan for Harris hosted a watch party in Exley Science Center’s Tishler Hall.
Government Department Chair Mary Alice Haddad organized the PAC watch party, where she established three viewing spaces: ABC in the forum and Fox News and PBS in neighboring rooms.
“Rarely do you know ahead of time that you’re at a juncture in history, and you will think back to where you were,” Haddad said. “I feel like tonight is one of those moments. I would rather be creating that memory here with all of you guys.”
The PAC watch party fun included Jenga, popcorn, and another bingo card that featured squares such as “celebrity shown voting” and “someone wearing purple.”
“What I’m happy about is I do not see visible signs of distress,” Haddad said a little after 9 p.m., turning to look around the room. “This is the way it should be.”
Meanwhile, across the street at the Wesleyan for Harris watch party, the allegorical Jenga blocks were already tumbling.
“I’m feeling pretty nervous,” Xander Starobin ’27, one of the group’s leaders, said around 9:20 p.m.
Starobin paced at the front of Tischler Hall under three projectors displaying MSNBC.
“I came into tonight feeling hopeful, though not exactly optimistic,” Starobin said. “I don’t know if I’m feeling so hopeful anymore. But certainly lots more votes to be counted, and no matter what happens, the work will continue.”
Starobin spent the weekend of Oct. 26 knocking on doors in Bethlehem and Allentown, Pa. with Wesleyan for Harris.
“That experience is part of what gave me some hope for tonight,” he said.
The first day canvassing, Starobin explained, so many volunteers flocked to Pennsylvania that the campaign ran out of doors to knock. Yet, two weeks later, Starobin expressed nervousness about the current tally.
“So far the vast majority of counties have shifted right from their 2020 numbers,” Starobin said. “The House and Senate races look a lot tighter than I would hope for them to be at this point in the night.”
Addressing the palpable stress in the room, Starobin turned around to face the crowded lecture hall.
“A lot of the people in this room have done a ton of work this cycle,” he said. “We’ve called thousands for phone banking. We collectively have knocked on over 2000 doors. So yeah, this year is pretty tense. I think for good reason.”
Earlier that night, just before 8 p.m., Thomas Bartolotta (belovedly known by students as Usdan’s Pasta Tom) shared this stress.
“Well, I’ll tell you what: I’m not going to look at my phone or watch the news for a couple of days,” Bartolotta said. “Because I remember that gut feeling I had in 2016 when Trump won. I don’t want to feel that again. It’s just gonna be a scary situation. It’s fucked up.”
Networks Call Close Races
Professor of Government and Wesleyan Media Project Director Erika Franklin Fowler spent election night in ABC’s decision room. Each major news organization employs its own decision team, Franklin Fowler said in a pre-recorded video shown at the PAC watch party, though often those teams will share the same data sets.
“The most important things to consider are how wide the margin is between the two leading candidates and what the size of the electorate is,” Franklin Fowler said. “If the margins are wide and the turnout is similar to the past, then it makes our calls much easier.”
Often, she said, political scientists join statisticians at the decision desks.
“The other big challenge is that counties do not report randomly,” she said.
Cities, for example, which often lean progressive, might report later than rural areas, which often lean conservative. Thus the early returns might have overstated Republican presence. Even when networks had already called the race in eastern states, Wesleyan for Harris volunteers continued to phone bank Arizona and Wisconsin voters until 9:30 p.m.
“It’s more so getting those people, especially in states that have an hour or so until [polls] close, to make that final leap,” Aidan McPhee ’27 said.
Judging by the grave faces in the room, that final leap seemed desperately far.
“I think the doom and gloom we might be feeling right now is understandable, but, you know, it’s too early to call,” Kiran Bleakney-Eastman ’27 said.
“We’re not going to know tonight,” McPhee affirmed.
“Well,” Bleakney-Eastman said, “Summies?”
“What is there left to drink to?”
By 11:20 p.m., the mood at the Wesleyan for Harris gathering had turned dire.
“I think people kind of realize the very frightening prospect,” Wesleyan for Harris organizer Luca D’Agruma ’27 said. “I didn’t come into the night feeling a lot of dread, [but] it’s kind of dawned on me: what that actually means for this country, for our communities, and for us.”
Someone in the crowd asked for a drink.
“What is there left to drink to?” another responded.
D’Agruma’s head dropped as he turned away from the crowd.
“There’s nothing we can do to try to ease the hurts and repercussions of any loss—if that is going to be the case,” he said.
After 11 p.m., every grim prediction came with a buffer: many votes left to count; regardless of who wins; if she does lose…
“If we do indeed win, it has to come with a really hard look at our campaigns and our ideas, if we were to come so close to losing to what I see as a wannabe fascist dictator,’” D’Agruma said.
D’Agruma and his fellow organizers have spent the past months working through those reflections and mobilizations.
“Everybody in this room has felt tremendously motivated the whole cycle,” Starobin said. “Everybody has done so much work to add our drop in the bucket.”
He paused for a moment as MSNBC released the newest results. The anchor called Connecticut for Harris. The Tischler crowd cheered. Wyoming went red. The crowd booed.
“Everyone did their part,” Daniele Lerner ’27 said. “We did everything we could.”
MSNBC called Kentucky and Kansas for Trump.
“But young people showed up, Wesleyan showed up,” D’Agruma said. “Elite democratic strategists like to blame certain groups, but in reality, we were failed from the top down. We had to reckon with an illegitimate and immoral foreign policy agenda which has broken our Democratic Party in two, [and] that has made it harder to mobilize our communities.”
D’Agruma and Starobin seem exhausted. They told me the next day that they’d stayed in Tischler until 1 a.m.
“I think, more than anything, this anxiety and nervousness is a reflection of that devotion to the things that we love,” Starobin said. “I have every bit of hope and confidence that regardless of the outcome of this election, people here will continue to believe in those things.”
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
A little after midnight, the conversation turned to fantasy. Alaska? Mail-in ballots? The line of succession?
“How many people have to die for a Democrat to be president?” I overheard someone say.
At the Outhouse watch party, Isaac Janiak Stein ’27 announced defeat.
“That [President] Michael Roth ’78 email tomorrow is gonna hit like a truck,” Janiak Stein said.
When tomorrow arrived, Starobin reflected on the night’s loss.
“I think everyone was defeated,” Starobin said of the night. “It felt pretty bleak, an overwhelming sense of weariness and confusion.”
David M. Csere, who has worked at Usdan since 1983 (and voted in every election since 1972), reflected on the campus mood during the 2016 election.
“I left the place, and everybody was joyous because Hillary Clinton was winning,” Csere said. “And then next morning I came in, it was like a ghost town here. Everybody was walking around as if somebody had passed.”
Fellow Wesleyan for Harris organizer Nicolas Millan ’27 echoed this cycle’s exhaustion.
“I remember around 1 a.m., I got texts from multiple people who just said, ‘What do we do now?’ And that’s the best way to describe it,” Millan said.
He felt specifically anxious about the status of immigrants under the new Trump regime.
“Donald Trump pledged immediately the day after the election that he’s going to deport all undocumented people in this country, and there are undocumented students on campus,” Millan said. “So what can we do?”
Starobin echoed Millan’s resolve.
“I feel weary,” Starobin said. “I feel exhausted. I believe in grief, but I’m not interested in grief without action.”
According to D’Agruma, Wesleyan for Harris organizing will continue looking forward, working to revitalize Wesleyan Democrats and partnering with the Wesleyan Sunrise Movement and the Wesleyan chapter of the Citizens Climate Lobby, which Starobin founded with Isabelle Harper ’27 this fall.
“We have to incorporate politics into our lives, not just a special interest but a practice,” Starobin said. “We have to build networks in our workplaces, our classrooms, and our places of joy.”
In addition to electoral politics, D’Agruma’s focus turned local.
“I think that there’s a spirit of volunteerism that should be built back,” D’Agruma said. “I think that people should shy away less from doing things that seem awkward—we can knock on neighbors’ doors even when there isn’t an election.”
Amalie Little ’25, co-chair of the Wesleyan Democratic Socialists—which did not launch a formal campaign for Harris—said the organization has been waiting on the election to determine political momentum and next moves.
“People are excited to feel excited again,” Little said. “A lot probably feel disenchanted by the Democratic Party. That anger can be really effective. Today, I’m processing. Tomorrow, angry.”
Thomas Lyons can be reached at trlyons@wesleyan.edu.