Jaime Hebel | Head of Illustration

Seven minutes past 7 p.m., a gaggle of students sporting “I Voted” stickers and camouflage print “Harris-Waltz” hats milled around Seigle 103, waiting for the WashU College Democrats election night watch party to commence. The nervous energy radiating off the group was palpable, cut briefly as WashU Democrats’ President, senior Saish Satyal, pushed through the crowd with a plentiful bounty of Domino’s pizza boxes stacked high in his arms. The watchers expected a night of community, come commiseration or celebration.

“I wasn’t expecting such a large turnout, but I’m very glad that I was here because I think I would have been extra stressed if I was alone … so we’re all in this together right now,” senior Doris Lamour said.

With a borrowed Peacock TV login and some closed-caption finagling, a triple-cam split between the broadcasts of NBC, MSNBC, and a live election map filled the screen. Satyal chalked a table of Pennsylvania election results on the blackboard. Students lined up in a neat queue for slices of pizza and half-heartedly pulled up rows of Macbooks for the veneer of studying. Tonight, though, these viewers had only one thing on their minds.

“I feel lowkey confident. I’ve been reading the news, and that doesn’t usually inspire, but if you don’t know what’s gonna happen, you might as well be confident, right? If both outcomes are equally likely, then there’s no point believing the one that you don’t like,” Satyal said as he buzzed around the board. 

By 7:50 p.m., the first waves of flickering red started to fill in the map. Although the room remained hopeful, it was hardly an inspiring sight. The idea of a group “guttural scream” out on Mudd Field was floated by senior Katie Hanson, a phrase aiming for jocular and landing on “uneasy.” Some of the Democrats, tongue-in-cheek, started leaning toward the superstitious. With one eye on the New York Times election needle prediction, Hanson jokingly started writing out a mantra for Vice President Kamala Harris’ win.

“What you do is you write the name of the target person. So in this case, [it’s] Kamala Harris, and then six times you write what you want to happen. So I’m saying ‘Kamala Harris will win the election’ six times,” Hanson explained, holding up a notebook of neatly printed lines.

“Oh, f–ck. It got worse,” Lamour interrupted, leaning over Hanson’s laptop to inspect the flickering needle on her screen, now reporting a 70% chance of victory for former president Donald Trump.

Others tried to keep their minds off the race. In the back of the room, junior Ariana Welsbie and senior Hanin Ghanam crocheted with spools of blue and green yarn. Welsbie, wearing a “Roe Roe Roe Your Boat” t-shirt, was working on the bottom of a sweater, while Ghanam made mini Grinches to sell on her Etsy shop. This was her third stress-relief creation of the night.

The abortion measure in Florida failed. Occasional calls from the Associated Press (AP) for races rung out across the room, breaking the conversation. Missouri was called for Trump, as were Texas, Ohio, and Nebraska, while Harris buffered a wall of blue on the east coast. The wave of poll closings rolled across the country, and so started the long night of counting. As the numbers ticked upwards, the room grew tense in hushed wait. The Democrats had known the race would be tight, but now the numbers began to look less close and point to an obvious frontrunner instead.

By 9 p.m., pizza long depleted and students petering out, the energy of the watch party waned enough to actually hear the jabber of the talking heads on the screen. Even the announcement of the passage of Missouri’s Amendment 3 drew only stiff silence. 

“It feels like 2016 all over again,” Satyal said, head in his hands, original optimism long evaporated.

At 9:40 p.m., Trump took Iowa — significantly — crushing the few remaining glimmers of hope raised by the last-minute Selzer poll predicting a Harris upset. By 10 p.m., North Carolina had been called for Trump. Impromptu electoral maps were constructed, jigsaw puzzling and piecing together any potential path to a win for Harris. Swap Michigan for Arizona, forget Georgia … could the Democrats still win this? 

By midnight, the end was clear, with no map or mathematical configuration left to try. The race had skewed far, far from what the Democrats had anticipated, much less hoped for. At the end of the night, though, the College Democrats had turned their sights toward the silver lining woven into the state and local wins on progressive issues.

“It seems like everything is over, and to be honest, things are going to be incredibly tough in this country for the next few years. But in Missouri, Amendment 3 protecting abortion rights passed, and Proposition A, raising the minimum wage has (so far) garnered a strong majority of the vote,” Satyal wrote in a statement to Student Life.

At the conclusion of a highly tumultuous and emotional campaign cycle, standing at the precipice of a new era for the country, Satyal urged WashU voters to fight for the future.

“It’s okay to be devastated about the election, and I personally think it’s a crime that we have to go to class on Wednesday. But I think that the success of [those amendments] shows that there’s still good work that can be done in harsh conditions and that, as hard as it may sound, maybe the start of another Trump presidency is the time to be more engaged than ever in organizing, campaigning, and issue advocacy,” Satyal wrote.