Campus was quiet on Wednesday morning, Nov. 6.
At 5:34 a.m., the Associated Press declared Donald Trump victorious in Wisconsin, granting him a total of 276 electoral college votes and a second term as President of the United States. He is the first president in American history to be re-elected after impeachment, the first president to be impeached twice and the second president to take a nonconsecutive second term.
Most news outlets predicted that the presidency would not be announced for several days due to the volume of mail-in and absentee ballots, as was the case for the 2020 presidential election. Even so, students gathered in dorm rooms, Gordon Commons, apartment complexes, off-campus houses and The Misc office to watch the race on election night. VassarVotes, a division of the Office of Community Engaged Learning, sponsored a screening of election coverage in the Villard Room, which drew a crowd of around 70. Across the hall in the Rose Parlor, the Forum for Political Thought hosted a discussion space; the Women’s Center and the LGBTQ+ Center held safe spaces.
Pre-election polls shifted daily, reflecting razor-thin margins in the seven battleground states. Data from The New York Times Presidential Poll showed Vice President and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris pulling ahead in Michigan and Wisconsin, Trump pulling ahead in Arizona and Georgia, and the two candidates tied in Pennsylvania, Nevada and North Carolina. By Wednesday, Trump either won or was leading in every battleground state. The GOP also claimed control over the Senate. Control over the House of Representatives remains undeclared, with the GOP in the lead.
“Even with the emotional preparation I did for this moment, I feel personally betrayed by my state right now,” Lily Anninger ’25 wrote to The Miscellany News. Anninger voted by absentee ballot in Pennsylvania. “My home let me down, and put me and countless others in danger,” she continued.
Based on self-reports from students, Dorm Voting Advisors (DVAs) for Noyes House Calder Beasley ’26 and Talia Yustein ’26 determined that the majority of Vassar students voted by mail in their home states, though there is no empirical evidence backing this claim yet.
For those registered to vote in Poughkeepsie, the Aula was open from 6 a.m. until 9 p.m. on Election Day. Approximately 500 voters, most of whom were Vassar students, gathered to cast their ballots—a record-high turnout. This was the first time the Aula poll site was open for a presidential election.
“As my first time voting in person, the Aula was a great place to vote. The poll workers were friendly and made the process as seamless as possible,” said Matthew Graham ’25. Like many students at Vassar, this was the first time he was eligible to vote in a presidential election.
The 2024 Presidential race has proved unprecedented from the start, when incumbent President Joe Biden decided to end his bid for reelection in July and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the Democratic ticket. Harris became the first woman of color to be the nominee of a major-party’s nominee in August.
In her bid for presidency, Harris focused on women’s health issues, in particular, the pledge to restore the federal right to abortion as protected by Roe, which was overturned in 2022. But the centerpiece of her campaign was her opposition to Project 2025, a set of proposals put forth by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank. While Trump has not endorsed the document, it was written by a collection of Trump’s former advisers.
The Republican party began the election cycle in a crowded race with 13 candidates; however, eight withdrew before the primaries began. Four candidates, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Asa Hutchinson and Vivek Ramaswamy all withdrew during the primaries, leaving Former President Donald Trump with the nomination as of March 12, 2024. Since then, the campaign has promised mass deportations, stricter immigration laws and several iterations of tax cuts. Trump has also vowed to end the war in Ukraine and cut federal funding to schools that teach critical race theory and transgender rights issues.
Although the presidential race loomed large, Vassar students demonstrated significant interest in local elections, as well. “I believe that the most important aspect of voting in a state such as New York, which will certainly go democratic in the presidential race, is the opportunity to vote for change at a local level,” Graham commented. This year, New York was considered a crucial battleground state in the race to control the House of Representatives; in a major upset, Republicans flipped four congressional seats in the 2022 election. Local elections in Poughkeepsie held particular significance; the city sits within the 18th congressional district, one of six major swing districts in New York.
“Poughkeepsie is a swing district and the race for the House runs right through New York so there’s a lot to be done here!” Mikayla DaSilva ’28, a DVA from Main, shared in a written statement to The Miscellany News.
Tuesday night, Pat Ryan, the incumbent Democrat candidate, was reelected to Congress, defeating Republican contender Alison Esposito with 56.6 percent of the vote, according to the Associated Press. Congressman Ryan was elected in 2022 after an August special election in the 19th congressional district. After a redistricting process in 2022, Ryan ran in the 18th congressional district in the general election and won against the Republican candidate Colin Schmitt.
Propositions on the Poughkeepsie ballot include Proposition 1, also referred to as the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) and Proposition 2, a proposal for the 2025 Library District budget. The ERA amendment, the only statewide proposal on the New York ballot, passed Tuesday Night. The amendment will expand protections in New York’s constitution and add protections against unequal treatment based on ethnicity, national origin, age, disability and sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity and pregnancy, as well as reproductive healthcare and autonomy. Multiple students commented on the importance of voting locally, specifically noting Prop 1 as a motive for changing their voter registration to Poughkeepsie. After voting, Molly Delahunty ’26 [Disclaimer: Delahunty is a Design Editor for The Miscellany News] said, “I think it was really important for me to vote in Poughkeepsie this election because there wasn’t a lot of variety in the votes my own hometown was receiving.”
Over the course of Election Day, campus buzzed with a mixture of emotions. Some students expressed excitement and optimism, like Isabel Auerbach ’27: “I feel like people in general, at least the people I’ve spoken to and the things that I’ve seen from the people’s posts online is that people seem pretty excited to vote,” she shared. Others were anxious, like Genevieve Reoch ’27: “I am nervously hopeful to see what happens.” Still others were generally dissatisfied with the presidential ticket, particularly regarding the subject of the ongoing Israeli military assault on Gaza and escalation into Lebanon. “I have felt very uneasy about this election because I do not feel that I see my values represented in either candidate, and I am deeply involved in organizing around Palestine and do not feel hope that either candidate will end the genocide of Palestinians that has been ongoing for over a year,” explained Kelly Fagel ’25.
After the presidency was announced, it was unclear what would come next on campus. In an email announcement, President of the College Elizabeth Bradley urged the Vassar community to support one another: “Our interconnectedness is at the core of our humanity.” Some professors continued with business as usual, while others tweaked their schedules. In his Intermediate Latin class, Professor Del Maticic, Blegen Fellow in Greek and Roman Studies, supplied donuts and led his students in a conversation about how the Roman poet Lucretius might have reacted to the 2024 election. “We did some translation and recitation, but really we just used the discussion of literature as a way to process grief, process fear,” he said in an interview with The Miscellany News.
Sofia Cummins ’26 spent her “Adolescent in American Society” class period participating in a series of mindfulness activities, including somatic exercises and a prayer circle. At one point, each student was asked to drop a note about their feelings into a bag, which her professor plans on burning later this evening. “A lot of people talked about missing home and feeling like they’re reliving this experience, but being in college and having it feel really different than it did in sixth or seventh grade,” she said in an interview.
With the exception of Nevada, which voted blue in the 2016 election, Trump’s victory map over Harris is identical to his victory map over Hillary Clinton. Unlike in 2016, Trump won the popular vote along with the electoral vote.
“In 2016, a lot of people were really shocked. A lot of people were trying to explain ‘why Trump,’” said Braeden Ingram ’25, a political science major who specializes in comparative politics. “I think this time around, there’s a different question that needs to be asked, and it’s ‘why is Trump’s movement so popular?’”
Charles Spencer ’27 hypothesized that Harris’ loss can be attributed to voters’ frustrations with the current White House’s economic policies: “I think ultimately, the big reason Trump won the election is that people still see Kamala as part of the current governmental establishment…and people do not feel like this current administration is doing a good job at driving down prices, driving down inflation,” he said in an interview.
Another student, Alex Southern ’27, argued that Harris over-prioritized appealing to Republican voters: “[W]e have seen that she couldn’t really pull any voters away from Trump that Biden hadn’t already pulled.”
Harris addressed the nation at 4 p.m. EST conceding the election and encouraging a peaceful transition of power. Her message was one of hope rather than despair: “Please know it’s going to be okay. On the campaign, I would often say, when we fight, we win. But here’s the thing, here’s the thing—sometimes, the fight takes a while. That doesn’t mean we won’t win.”
Trump is slated to take office on Jan. 20, 2025.
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