Eric Zuniga, Campus Carrier news editor
Donald J. Trump has been elected the next President of the United States, defeating his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, in one of the closest and most contentious presidential races in the
country’s history.
Trump was projected to win Georgia early Wednesday morning, capturing the key swing state’s 16 electoral votes. The former president took 50.7% of the vote here, winning over Harris by about 115,000 votes and flipping a state Biden won in 2020. In Floyd County, Trump won decisively, taking 70% of the vote to Harris’s 28%.
The former president was also projected to capture the battleground states of North Carolina, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, putting him over the 270 electoral votes required to win the presidency. He currently leads in Nevada and Arizona, which were still counting votes on Wednesday. Trump is poised to improve his standing in every swing state over 2020 and is likely to win the national popular vote for the first time in his political career.
Trump’s election marks a historic moment in American politics. He will be the first president to have been convicted of a felony, and his pledges to enact retribution against political enemies have concerned many about the future of American democracy. Yet voters appeared to use the election as a chance to register their disapproval of an unpopular Biden administration and the state of the economy.
“What everyday Americans were living was high inflation, high interest rates,” Associate Professor of Political Science Eric Sands said. “A president and a vice president have very little control over those things, but the problem is, when you’re in office, that’s where the buck stops. There wasn’t a lot that Kamala could get out of her milage from those things.”
Sands said that Trump’s narrow victory in Georgia cements its status as a key purple state.
“Georgia is, right now, a purple state — both of our senators are Democrats, our governor is a Republican,” Sands said. “We’re a 50-50 state, and so elections are going to be won or lost in Georgia at the margins.”
According to Sands, Trump is likely to focus on passing restrictive immigration legislation once he takes office. In foreign policy, he is likely to increase American support for Israel in its conflicts in the Middle East while potentially reducing support for Ukraine in its war effort against Russia.
Students and faculty at Berry have been divided in their reactions to Trump’s win. Senior Amanda Milner is the president of Berry’s Turning Point USA chapter, part of a national group that encourages political participation among conservative students. She welcomed the election result, saying that Trump’s pledge to curb inflation will be good for college students.
“Now with someone that cares about the ability for young people to finish out school, find good jobs and have the freedom and choice to do that, just that we have that economic financial freedom is going to be a big deal for our age group,” Milner said.
Milner said she is also looking forward to having a president that she believes aligns more with her spiritual views.
“I care about someone who at least connects with me spiritually, religiously,” Milner said. “I believe that Donald Trump connects more with that than Kamala Harris did. There’s a lot of comments recently, just in the religious topics of that. That’s something I’m thankful to see.”
Professor of English, rhetoric and writing Jim Watkins is a co-adviser to the Young Democrats chapter. He views the election result as a sign that Trump’s anti-immigrant and anti-liberal narrative is gaining ground among Americans. With Trump having increasingly embraced authoritarian rhetoric during this campaign, he said he is anxious to see if Trump respects democratic principles in his return to the White House.
“There definitely is a rise of authoritarianism around the world that’s been spurred by Trump’s election in 2016,” Watkins said. “We’ve been used to seeing Trump trying to fight against [institutions], but how will he function with those institutions in Republican control? And will Project 2025 turn out to be the real thing as we’ve insisted or fearmongering as the Republican camp has claimed?”
Sophomore Damian Marko, who is the president of Berry’s Young Democrats, said that he is viewing the party’s loss in this election as a learning opportunity.
“We’re going to see a lot of hurt feelings, a lot of big feelings from young generations,” Marko said. “This is going to be a very heavy topic. We might move on, but we’re not going to forget it. This is going to be something more of a learning experience of what we can do better next time, where we need to improve as we get older.”
Both Turning Point USA and Young Democrats held events on campus to encourage political participation in the lead-up to the election. Marko said the Young Democrats focused on voter registration efforts.
“We wanted to at least make sure that people had the chance or the opportunity to vote if they could,” Marko said. “We just wanted to help them establish their stance in the political sphere, so even if they can’t vote now, they can later.”
According to Milner, Turning Point USA, which became an officially recognized student group this semester, has hosted educational events on conservative values.
“We had a little tabling day, and we had little buttons [and] stickers, just having conversations with people,” Milner said. “I was very thankful and encouraged that we could have good conversations that agree and disagree, that we could bring that presence of ‘this is a conservative values organization.’”
Democrats suffered other losses nationally, with Republicans taking control of the Senate and control of the House of Representatives currently on a knife’s edge. Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene decisively won reelection to the House district representing Berry.
Preliminary results indicate that Democrats have lost ground among many traditionally strong groups for the party. According to the New York Times, majority-Hispanic counties shifted toward Trump by 10% in this election. Sands said this is a sign Democrats can no longer take the Hispanic vote for granted.
“It tells the Democrats you’re going to have to do more than just assume; you’re going to have to be proactive here and give them an argument and a reason to vote for you,”
Sands said.
Marko said that the Harris campaign may have faced challenges mobilizing young voters this year.
“I think that the initial factor was hope, and over time, I think there was a lot of voter apathy within young people,” Marko said. “People were like, ‘she doesn’t seem like she’s too one way or the other. We need a definite plan. We need a definite position on that.’ For her, it was a lot of work in progress because she had not as much time, I think.”
With the election over, political groups at Berry are turning awareness-raising and other programming. Milner said that Turning Point USA is planning on hosting social events as well as more educational events about lesser-known issues such as homeschooling. Marko said that Young Democrats will be working to bring in speakers from national organizations in addition to continuing efforts to create safe spaces for civil discussion.
With the country still grappling with a highly polarized political climate, Watkins urged students to stay informed and resist distrust.
“Neither side trusts the other — one side thinks the other’s duped fools, the other side thinks the other hates America and wants to destroy it, and we have to figure out how to get beyond it,” Watkins said. “Find solidarity in your friends and try to pay attention to what’s going on beyond the soundbites you get in your social media feeds. Read newspapers, look and see how the rest of the world is reacting to this election. Try to get some context for what’s happening and you’ll be better for it.”