This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.
Huddled around the TV at election watch parties, or glued to their phone screens for updates, Vermonters on Tuesday night waited as the results of the 2024 presidential race trickled in.
Without many suspenseful contests at the statewide level, many Vermont residents were focused on the far more uncertain results of who would win the White House — a neck-and-neck race between Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, and former President Donald Trump, a Republican. The election will likely be decided by a small number of voters in a few key swing states, and if it is anything like the last, it could be days before the race is called.
At a campus pub at the University of Vermont, students pecked at their dinners and colored in election bingo cards as they watched C-SPAN with apprehension.
“I’m seeing Republicans leading so far, and that’s a little startling,” said Avery Griffith, a sophomore from Newton, Massachusetts who voted back in his home state, for Harris.
It was a few minutes before 8 o’clock, and Griffith had hopes the night would take a turn. “I’m sure it’ll improve,” he said. “I hope so. I really do.”
READ MORE
Vermont was the first state called for Harris, just after polls closed. Which candidate the state would vote to send to the White House did not exactly keep observers on the edge of their seats: recent polling had showed 63% of likely voters planned to vote for Harris, or already had. That’s hardly a surprise, as Vermonters handed President Joe Biden an overwhelming victory in 2020, and have consistently signaled their disapproval for Trump. The Republican nominee’s primary challenger, Nikki Haley, notched her one and only state victory in Vermont this spring, before dropping out of the race.
Jay Sandler, a first year UVM student, voted absentee back home in Georgia, a pivotal swing state. They are also bracing for a Trump victory that, they fear, could imperil their access to gender-affirming medical care.
“I have made preparations to make my life livable either way,” they said. “The pharmacy gave me a year’s supply of my hormones yesterday.”
Many braced for the uncertainty to linger well past Tuesday night, recalling the long days in early November 2020 when election officials sorted through a pandemic-era surge in mail-in ballots before declaring Biden the winner. After that, Trump refused to concede, stoked the January 6th U.S. Capitol insurrection, and has maintained that the race was ‘a fraud.’
A poll released earlier this week found that Vermonters have considerable concerns around election integrity and political violence. And at the polls on Tuesday, some Vermont voters expressed their worry that claims of election fraud could dominate in the coming days.
“I’m sure there will be some sort of shenanigans in terms of, like, saying the election is fraudulent. There have already been some claims that it’s fraudulent, so that kind of thing is, that’s what makes me feel fear,” said literacy coach Jenn Childress at the polls in Winooski on Tuesday morning. She said she was motivated to vote by “all of the insane rhetoric of Trump and other Republicans.”
Norman Boyden, a retired clockmaker from Williston who voted for Trump, also voiced his concerns about election fairness on Tuesday. “I’m concerned that there will be all kinds of trickery,” he said.
Dan Redondo, 54, owns Vermont Wetland Plant Supply in Orwell. He voted by mail, but came to Orwell Town Hall to pick up his “I voted” sticker, plus an extra “future voter” sticker for his 17-year-old daughter.
“You don’t get a chance to vote against somebody who led an insurrection in the country more than twice,” he said. “This is my chance to do it again.”
Emma Cotton, Neal Goswami and Paul Heintz contributed reporting.
This story will be updated.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Vermonters on edge as they await presidential election results.