BUCKS COUNTY, PA — At 9 p.m., the wine was flowing and the spirits were high for the hundreds of Democrats who had gathered for a watch party at a farmhouse inn. Cable news maps were projected on the big screen. The crowd rose to their feet any time Pennsylvania appeared. People were here for a celebration.
Two hours later, the wine was still flowing, but for different reasons. The mood had changed. The crowd had dwindled. Those left in the room were huddled together, scrolling on their phones or wiping away tears.
Kamala Harris’ pathway to the presidency always seemed to run through Pennsylvania, and winning Pennsylvania relied on meeting or increasing turnout in the Philadelphia suburbs, turning out women over abortion and flipping independent voters who had soured on Trump.
Instead, Trump looks like he may win Bucks County outright, becoming the first Republican to do so since 1988, on his way to winning Pennsylvania and the presidency.
Steve Santarsiero, the state senator representing Bucks County and chair of the county Democratic Party, told the crowd early in the night that he was confident Harris would perform ahead of Joe Biden in the county.
By 11:30 p.m., Santarsiero still felt Harris would win Pennsylvania and Bucks County.
“We don’t know by what margins yet, it may not be the margins that Joe Biden got four years ago,” Santarsiero said.
But he was only speaking to a couple dozen people by that point in the night.
“I think we’re going to wrap it up here shortly,” he added.
While ballots continue to be counted in Bucks and other Pennsylvania counties, the Associated Press has already called the state for Trump. What remains is only sorting out how badly Harris underperformed here compared to Biden in 2020.
Maureen Brill, judge of elections in Buckingham Township, had been up since 3 a.m. and made it to the election party after 10:30 p.m., once results in the township had been sent to the county’s board of elections.
By the time she made it to the party, it wasn’t a party at all.
“I noticed immediately that the people here weren’t happy at all,” she said.
Brill noted that in her relatively conservative area, the number of voters on Tuesday was the biggest she’d ever seen, and that many of those voters were people she’d never seen at the polls before.
“I’m not happy to see how well Trump is doing, but I’m also not surprised,” Brill said.
An hour before polls closed in the borough of Newtown, Joel Raab started to pack up signs at the local precinct. Once concern remained at the top of his mind.
“Absolutely I’m concerned about how the economy is playing with voters,” Raab told NOTUS.
“People here aren’t looking to get $25,000 for a home loan. There aren’t that many renters around here, most people are homeowners, and so it really didn’t resonate here,” he said.
Pat and Peggy Walsh sat in the back of the room as results trickled in that continued to narrow Harris’ chances to win Pennsylvania. Even as local leader after local leader went onstage, projecting their optimism that mail-in votes would give Harris the narrow lead after lagging all night, they felt resigned.
“Watching this makes me depressed, very depressed, on the verge of tears,” Pat said. “I don’t know where we got all our optimism, but I guess we thought it was going to be blue,”
“A blue tsunami,” Peggy said, finishing her husband’s sentence.
“What I feel in my heart is, we will move, we will move to Ireland,” Pat said. “I’m not going to go through another four years of watching people around me just get hurt.”
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Katherine Swartz is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.