BY JACKSON CHEN | After an exhausting 2016 election cycle topped off for some by extremely long voting lines, Manhattanites are in shock after Republican Donald Trump won the presidency over Democrat Hillary Clinton, who for four years had served as secretary of state to President Barack Obama, whose popularity is at a high point.
To be sure, Clinton secured a commanding win in New York State, with 58 percent of the vote, but Trump’s path to victory was paved with several key battlegrounds like Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
With roughly 97 percent of Manhattan’s election districts reporting, the Democratic candidate earned more than 500,000 votes compared to roughly 60,000 for her opponent, according to the state’s Board of Elections. New York has voted heavily Democratic for decades, regardless of which way the nation was moving, but this time the disconnect with the overall results was jarring. Manhattanites grew more and more somber as the tallies continued moving in Trump’s favor into the early morning hours of November 9.“I think it’s a really bleak picture,” Caroline Tucker, a lifelong Upper East Sider, said. “We really need to heal and unite as a country, and I think [Trump is] the opposite person to do that.”
Tucker, like many others approached on Election Day, said that Clinton was her obvious choice. But with Trump moving from his Fifth Avenue luxury building into the White House, people expressed serious concern about the future that comes along with that.
“I think the country is very, very divided, the election has shown just that,” Tucker, said. “People aren’t even necessarily thinking about the next four years. I think they’re thinking about the next year, repairing things, and making people feel proud to be Americans again.”
For Jane, an Upper West Sider who withheld her last name, four years of Trump “scares the heck of out me.” She added that while she had reservations about Clinton and didn’t agree with everything in her campaign, she was a much more suitable choice for the presidency.
“She’s a pretty impressive woman, and she’s accomplished a lot in her lifetime,” Jane said. “I like that her life has been about service to the public whereas Trump has been about service to himself.”
Jane acknowledged that there could be a chance Trump tones down his campaign rhetoric as president, but that she still didn’t agree with his approach of bullying others.
“I’m really scared what he possibly could do because he’s so volatile in his emotional response to things,” she said.
Most of those donning the red, white, and blue “I Voted” stickers on the Upper East and West Sides on November 8 said they had voted Clinton or declined to comment, while a small minority explained they had used their ballot as a statement.
“I honestly didn’t feel like my vote was going to be the difference between Hillary and Trump, so I figured I could exercise a protest vote,” James Scanlon said, adding he wrote in Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator who campaigned hard against Clinton for the Democratic Party’s nomination and later gave her his full support.
According to the Board of Elections, write-in votes in Manhattan totaled more than 5,500, and the Green Party’s Jill Stein earned more than 8,500, while Gary Johnson on both the Independent and Libertarian Party lines secured roughly the same amount.
But many, many more were in support of the former New York senator and secretary of state and voiced dismay at the tightness of the race and the subsequent results late on Election Night.
Caroline Malsin, an Upper West Sider for 38 years, said she voted for Clinton because she was the brightest and best equipped for the presidency. She added that in her professional capacity as a psychotherapist, she views Trump as an extreme version of a narcissist who can become dangerous after gaining power.
“He’s been playing out of the Hitler playbook all along, tell a lie often enough and loud enough, people start to believe it,” Malsin said. “America is going to turn more authoritarian. He’s going to take away more rights, and he won’t follow through on any of his words for working people.”
For those wanting to fulfill their civic duty, long lines at some voting locations soaked up several hours in their day Tuesday. Patient, persistent voters shared images and videos online of the extremely long lines – curling around city blocks – they endured.
Upper East Side City Councilmember Ben Kallos shared video of P.S. 290 at 311 East 82nd Street with a line that wrapped around two corners. He urged others to share their experiences if they’d been forced to wait excessively to vote.
Reports came in about Yorkville Community School at 421 East 88th Street having several of their ballot scanners not working. As for the Upper West Side, videos and photos from voters showed long lines also circling around polling locations at P.S. 75 at 735 West End Avenue and P.S. 87 at 160 West 78th Street.
But now that the nation has counted virtually all the votes and Trump has what he needed in the Electoral College – Clinton beat him by at least 1.15 million in the popular vote – Upper East and Upper West Siders are left wondering what the future holds.
“I think he’s so unpredictable,” Samuel Copeland, an Upper East Sider who voted for Clinton, said of Trump. “It’s even hard to predict what those four years are going to look like.”
