It’s a night that will be ingrained in people’s minds for generations to come: 8 November 2016. The night Donald Trump proved all political pundits, and pollsters wrong and spread much shock, and a lot of alarm, across the planet, while delighting his supporters.
For people watching the results unfold in the US, particularly those who supported Hillary Clinton and were preparing to celebrate America’s first female president, it was a turbulent night. Many people watched the event unfold through updates on their phones and tried to make sense of the moment by texting their family and friends.
On the first anniversary of Trump’s election, the Guardian looks back on the evening through the eyes of Clinton supporters across the country. Some supporters shared the text message exchanges they had that evening.
The morning: America goes to the polls
On election morning, Americans took to the polls in what, at the time, seemed to be an election that could only go one way. The New York Times’s Upshot blog gave Hillary Clinton a 91% chance of winning, The Huffington Post had her at 98% and the Princeton Election Consortium had the results as an almost inevitability at 99%.
This coronation, though, had been dampened 10 days earlier when the FBI announced it had reopened its investigation into her use of a personal email server. The revelation, made public by the then FBI director James Comey, rattled her poll numbers, but experts and pundits still placed Clinton as the likely winner.
Fresh from a midnight rally with Bon Jovi and Lady Gaga in North Carolina, Clinton flew home early in the morning and voted at an elementary school in Chappaqua, New York. “So many people are counting on the outcome of this election, what it means for our country and I’ll do the very best I can if I’m fortunate enough to win today,” she told a reporter.
Trump spent the night before addressing a rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, with no celebrities, but claimed he had the backing of the New England Patriots star quarterback, Tom Brady, and their head coach, Bill Belichick. Trump entered his polling station in midtown Manhattan to a chorus of boos outside but a warm welcome from a supporter inside.
A few blocks south in Manhattan, Jessie Chaffee was voting in Greenwich Village, the neighborhood she’d grown up in and voted in for years. Chaffee, author of the novel Florence in Ecstasy, had tickets for Clinton’s election party in the Javits Center that night. The moment she saw a woman’s name on the ballot was incredibly moving, she said. “It was not unlike the feeling eight years earlier, when voting for Obama. Being able to vote for a black man for president,” she recalled. “That morning there was hope and excitement.” She took a moment to sit down in a park after voting and soak it all in.
In Rochester, New York state, many chose to mark the milestone by placing their “I voted” stickers on the grave of suffragette leader Susan B Anthony.
Across the country, Maurice Cheeks, a city councilman in Madison, Wisconsin, put a shirt that said Future Feminist on his 10-month-old daughter. “I was excited because … she was going to have the opportunity to grow up in a world where she was going to get to see,” a female president, he told the Guardian.
Polls close and the pundits go into overdrive
As the polls closed, Americans left work and gathered with their friends and family to watch the results pour in. Panelists from all the major networks gathered for the night they’d been preparing for the past 18 months. They all began by explaining how incredibly difficult it would be for Trump to win the election.
As pollsters reminded people throughout the night, in order for Trump to win he would have to first win Florida, which he was predicted to lose, and then destroy the “blue firewall” of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, three states a Republican had not won in a generation, and Trump was also predicted to lose.
Clinton supporters were hopeful of a landslide victory and the beginning of a liberal zenith brought about by shifting demographics in the country.
The pundits for each network were all providing their analysis, with CNN’s John King jumping around the interactive map, zooming in and out of counties to explain their significance.
In Washington, Elizabeth Williams and her boyfriend went to a watch party in the Adams Morgan area with friends. The atmosphere at the bar, full of Clinton supporters, was buoyant. “I heard she had a glass ceiling,” Williams recalls her friend saying about the expected Clinton victory party. People were ordering rounds of drinks, as five TVs above the bar were playing the results.
Penny Dailey came home from work in Sacramento, California, full of joy and anticipation to see the first woman being elected US president. “It was close to what I felt to my son being born. It was that joyful.”
The first few states were called in the direction that most people expected. Trump winning West Virginia, Tennessee and other solidly Republican states, and Clinton winning reliably Democratic states such as Connecticut and Illinois.
In CNN’s situation room, John King was becoming more and more breathless as he explained that Florida was a lot tighter than people had expected. Just hours before, analysts said the early signs looked good for Clinton but now she was neck-and-neck with Trump.
At the bar in Adams Morgan, Williams said the place suddenly got a lot quieter as people stopped joking with one another and became glued to their phones. “People stopped going to the bar, they wanted to be attentive and sober.”
Florida
A huge surge in the Latino vote was not enough to give Clinton the state of Florida. Trump won and defied all expectations, which sent pundits, analysts, and pollsters into a headspin to try to calculate what Clinton’s remaining path to victory might be.
The New York Times’s Upshot had created an interactive that showed the candidate most likely to win as a meter that changed in real time. It started the day at 91% chance of Clinton winning but now had Trump as the most likely victor.
The Hilton Marriott in Manhattan, where Trump supporters were holding their party, erupted in joy when the news came through. The Javits Center, across town, was silent. A performance by Katy Perry, which was intended to be jubilant, fell flat – nobody was in the mood.
Everybody’s attention turned to the rust belt: Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. A combination of these states was Clinton’s only path.
In Wisconsin, a state that hasn’t turned red since 1988, Erin Forrest was not feeling hopeful. Forrest was working with an independent pro-Clinton organizing group, and on election day was stationed in Madison making sure organizers across the state had what they needed. When Florida was announced, she and her colleagues started getting flooded with calls. “Nobody thought it was a lock,” she recalled. “I was a nervous wreck all day. I, in particular, was crying off and on.”
Outside of the campaign, Forrest is the executive director for Emerge Wisconsin, a group dedicated to getting women elected to office so she was overwhelmed with joy at the prospect of a female president but also fearful that she might lose. “There was sad, worried crying, there was happy and fired-up crying.”
Back at the Javits Center, Chaffee left the main auditorium where there was a growing sense of dread, with some people holding on to this hope that it still might happen. She and her friend found a quieter area where she texted friends and family. Eventually, she recalled a young man looked up from his phone and said, “I just keep trying to get it to work in her favor and no matter what I put in, I can’t.”
Images of people breaking down in tears at the Javits Center and other Clinton supporters parties began flashing across all the major networks as the reality of a Trump presidency began to sink in.
In Washington, Williams’ boyfriend leaned over to her and said, “I think we should go home.”
A political earthquake
“As soon as Pennsylvania happened, we were like, ‘This is done,’” Forrest, in the Wisconsin organizing center, recalled.
Trump became the first Republican candidate to win Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan since 1988. His “rust belt strategy” had paid off .
John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman, came out at the Javits Center and told everyone to go home as there would be no speech from the Democratic nominee that night. “They’re still counting votes and every vote should count,” he told the remaining diehards at the Javits Center.
Clinton did eventually call Trump to concede the election. The now president-elect came out at the Hilton Marriott with his family and the vice-president-elect, Mike Pence, and his family to make his acceptance speech. “To all Republicans and Democrats and independents across this nation, I say it is time for us to come together as one united people,” Trump said.
In Sacramento, Dailey felt unwell. “It was like somebody had just kicked me in the stomach. I had no idea what would happen from that moment.”
Dailey wasn’t the only one. News pundits struggled to hide their shock, and horror. The CNN commentator Van Jones said Trump’s victory was fueled by a “whitelash” against a changing country. “How do I explain this to my children?” he wondered.
Forrest was wondering the same thing about her children who were in her hometown of Waterloo, Wisconsin. “My daughter and my son had gone to bed thinking things were gonna be OK,” she recalled. She broke down heaving and sobbing when she realized that she would not be the one to tell them what happened.
Cheeks, the Madison city councilman, was also scared. His wife was not a political junkie like he was, and he assured her that it was absolutely impossible for Trump to win. “I thought you said this wouldn’t happen,” she told him after Trump’s victory was announced. “I didn’t have an answer for her,” he recalled. “For the first time, [Cheeks’s wife] thought to herself, ‘What does this mean? We just had a child that we’re bringing up in this world where Donald Trump is the president.’”
Trent Vanegas was at the Javits Center in New York. He had flown in from Los Angeles that morning to see the first female president get elected and kick off a week-long celebration. He and his friend ran out of the Javits Center after Podesta’s speech and ignored reporters asking them how they felt. People around them were in tears. As soon as they crossed the street, Vanegas broke down as well and embraced his friend. “It kind of just hit you, that we almost had it all. One moment, there’s hope and the next moment it’s complete despair,” he recalled. “[My friend] was just apologizing for getting makeup on my white shirt.” They had both worn white in honor of the suffragettes.
That night, people on both coasts began to take to the streets as protests slowly bubbled up in Oakland and New York.
Clinton’s concession – the resistance begins
“I woke up the next morning with tears in my eyes,” Chaffee remembered.
On the morning of 9 November, world leaders were tweeting out their congratulations to the president-elect. Republicans who were previously critical of Trump, were now wishing him all the best. News also broke that Clinton would be giving a speech at the New Yorker hotel.
After being pushed back multiple times, Clinton took the stage at around 11.30am, dressed in purple and black, to signify unity. “We must accept this result and then look to the future. Donald Trump is going to be our president.”
“I know we have still not shattered that highest and hardest glass ceiling, but I know someday someone will and hopefully sooner than we might think right now,” she added.
Hours earlier, Forrest had decided she was going to quit her job. She thought, how could I in good faith encourage women to get into politics after this result? “I changed my mind when I saw the concession speech,” she said.
In the coming days, Forrest said more women than ever signed up for Emerge.
Vanegas didn’t want to watch the speech but felt obliged to. Clinton’s composure was inspiring, he said. Later he and his friend heard that people were meeting in Union Square in New York city and he decided to join them. They ended up at Trump Tower for what would be the first of many protests.
For Cheeks, a text from his mother jolted him back into reality. She told him, it was his job as a local leader to be someone that could be counted on. “Don’t get discouraged,” she told him.
- This article was amended on 8 November 2017 to remove a video of Rachel Maddow. The video was not of Maddow on the night Trump was elected, as initially thought.
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