As the polls closed Tuesday night, Connecticut residents around the state congregated in groups large and small to watch as the results rolled in.
They gathered in churches, homes, bars and social clubs, waiting alongside the rest of the country to learn the results of a highly polarized presidential election. This year’s historic election season saw an assassination attempt on the Republican candidate, a late change to the Democratic ticket and rising anxiety across the political spectrum.
While Connecticut is likely to be called early in the evening for Vice President Kamala Harris, both candidates’ supporters tuned in to national broadcasts tracking the results in states where the outcome wasn’t as predictable.
The Connecticut Mirror is spending the evening with two groups of those voters and will be updating this story with what we saw and heard as the night progresses.
8:05 p.m., Monroe
The Monroe house filled gradually as the minutes ticked by to the close of Connecticut’s polls. Chris Carrena, the Republican state senate candidate in the 22nd District, and his supporters chatted while a live stream of Fox news played projected on a wall.
Carrena wore a maroon suit and fielded calls from family in Florida as well as local supporters. He’s running on a platform focused on affordability, crime reduction and education equity, he said.
Even as numbers from Carrena’s race trickled in, the presidential race loomed large in the house.
Elizabeth Carrena, the mother of the candidate, said she’d spent the day out at the polls talking to voters. She heard from lots of young people, particularly men, who were worried about border security, she said.
“The same themes came up over and over again,” she said. “It was young families just trying to make it.”
The room grew quiet as the Fox anchor announced early results — that the electoral college was split 23-3 in favor of former President Donald Trump.
8:05 p.m., Bridgeport
In the basement hall of Mount Aery Baptist Church in Bridgeport, community members gathered and greeted each other as large foil containers of food were being set out on tables near a back kitchen. People checked their phones and gently inquired of each other whether any states had yet been called.
The event was co-hosted by FaithActs for Education, a faith-based education advocacy nonprofit, and local chapters of several historically Black fraternities and sororities — including that of Vice President Kamala Harris, Alpha Kappa Alpha (A.K.A.).
Jamilah Prince-Stewart, executive director of FaithActs and an A.K.A. sister, said it was important to her to spend the evening “in community” as the election results started rolling in. “This country is deeply polarized and deeply divided, and as a people, we have to figure out how to pick up the pieces after tonight,” she said.
“I want to do that with people who see my humanity and see me as a whole person tonight,” Prince-Stewart said. “If I want to dance, I want to dance. If I want to cry, I want to cry. If I want to go to sleep, I want to go to sleep, but I don’t want to be judged by that. I just want to be able to shed the layers, not have my walls up, and just be myself — however that version of me appears.”
Prince-Stewart grew up in New Haven, attended Yale University, where she joined A.K.A., and is now raising three children in the same community. The first presidential election she voted in was 2008, when Barack Obama won the race, becoming the first Black president of the United States. Prince-Stewart recalled voting with her grandmother that day, and knocking on doors in New Haven to encourage other people to get to the polls.
“There was just a lot of momentum in 2008,” she said. “Something happened that people thought wasn’t possible in their lifetime.” This year isn’t entirely different, she said. “Energy shifts, but people’s reality don’t.”
After a day spent phone-banking in Hamden with dozens of FaithActs volunteers, from teenagers to elderly aunts, Prince-Stewart said she was “feeling really good.” Doing the work of encouraging people to vote and helping them get there sustains her, she said. “It’s like soul food.”
8:51 p.m., Monroe
When Chris Pettinella entered the party, his eyes immediately went to the screen.
“This is what I like to see,” Pettinella said, pointing at the Florida results, soon after the state had been called for Trump.
Pettinella, a 17-year-old senior at Trumbull High School and one of the administrators of the Connecticut for Trump Facebook group, spent much of his day campaigning for Carrena.
The mood in the room was elevated as Trump pulled ahead early in the night, before many states’ polls had closed. Although Connecticut was quickly called for Harris, the group brushed it off. They expected those results in their blue state.
But, Pettinella noted, looking at the local results, “If Trump wins Trumbull, it’s going to drive them insane.”