The news of Donald Trump winning the presidential election prompted mixed emotions Wednesday for North Texas voters.
Trump beat Vice President Kamala Harris in the Lone Star State, securing 40 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win. Dallas County was a blue speck on the results map with its neighboring counties unsurprisingly red.
Trump is the first person convicted of a felony to win the White House and the first former president to regain power since 1892. The victory marks an extraordinary comeback for a former president who refused to accept defeat four years ago, sparked a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, faced dozens of felony charges and survived two assassination attempts.
Republicans also took control of the Senate, flipping Democrat-held seats in West Virginia and Ohio.
The Dallas Morning News spoke with several voters to get a better understanding of how they feel about the results and what’s at stake for them over the next four years.
Ken Fitzgerald
Ken Fitzgerald brought his kids Betty, 9, and Peter, 7, along with him to vote Tuesday at Lakewood Elementary. He said the kids knew about the election since school was closed and were asking questions so he wanted them to see what their school library looked like as a polling place.
Fitzgerald, 41, laughed Wednesday morning recalling Betty and Peter complaining that the line was boring and long but he said they paid careful attention to what he was doing when it came time to fill out the ballot and insert it into the machine.
He said they asked “Who won?” a few times before he sent them to bed because they were falling asleep on the couch. Then, when they woke up the next morning, he told them about Trump’s victory.
“I was glad to leave them with some memory where they got to participate and go vote,” Fitzgerald said.
Though his kids aren’t old enough to get the politics of it all, Fitzgerald, who voted for Trump, said he felt the election results reflected how the majority of voters feel about the current administration’s policies and agenda.
“The economy, inflation and high interest rates are things that people have endured and most voters did not believe things would materially change if there was a continuation of similar leadership,” he said.
Elise Schedler
Devastation hit Elise Schedler early Wednesday. The 28-year-old stayed up late watching as totals tallied up. She was initially optimistic about a blue wave, but as Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral college votes looked less and less attainable for Harris, she lost hope. Despite dreams of an upset by Dems, she woke up dreading seeing the results on her phone.
“I’m just kind of going to stay away from Twitter for the next four years and hope we don’t have another world war,” she said.
Schedler said Trump’s last term was marred by “constant stress, anxiety at all times.” She worries about his potentially unfettered power: “Leading with bigotry and leading with that much inherent polarization … I’m worried that it’s going to snowball.”
Women’s rights and securing access to abortion were top-of-mind for Schedler this election. And the effect, she said, will extend beyond Trump’s next four years.
“A lot of women I know are coming together right now and trying to stand up for one another, and support each other, and be loud and care about one another,” she said.
“But at the same time, the fact that we have to come together in our own country, in our own homes, seems incredibly regressive.”
Christopher Barnette
Christopher Barnette, a downtown resident, was sporting a bald eagle and American flag T-shirt while walking his dog Wednesday morning near Klyde Warren Park.
”I’m honestly wearing this ironically, I truly don’t believe in the country right now,” the 27-year-old said. “But I believe in its people.”
He repeatedly said the result of the presidential election “sucks,” but he also called on people to differentiate between Trump voters who were motivated by hatred and those who cast their ballot out of obligation.
”Try not to go too hard on them … because you can only do so much by pushing people away,” he said.
Barnette also said he believes local politics affect people’s day-to-day lives more and was pleased by the passage of some of the ballot initiatives, including the decriminalization of small amounts of marijuana.
James Parker
James Parker feels comfortable with Trump as president-elect. Parker, 35, who works in manufacturing, voted for the Republican candidate, believing he can fix the housing market, ballooning grocery costs and high gas prices.
“I’m excited for the next four years, at least, to know that I’ll be able to financially be straight and structure my life accordingly,” Parker said. “I feel like this is a huge win.”
Parker added: “I expect him to change a lot, that’ll pretty much make the people more comfortable rather than objectives that just don’t address what’s going on in everyday life.”
Tiffanie Carney
Tiffanie Carney, 51, said she was “baffled” and “in a state of shock” Wednesday morning.
“We’re just wondering what the future is going to be,” the Harris voter said. “I’m in a state of fear right now, a state of uncertainty.”
Carney said she watched the results come in into the early morning. When Trump closed in after winning Georgia, Carney said she turned her TV off and prayed.
“Lord watch over us, whichever way it goes,” she said. “I did my part.”
Carney said she believes there are even bigger implications tied to the fact Republicans also took control of the Senate — especially in regards to women’s health care.
“Women went for this,” Carney said. “I’m past my child-bearing years, but If I had no way of getting the access to the medical help I needed, that would have torn me apart.
“I really paid attention this time and I wanted my voice to be heard. I thought everyone else did and that we all wanted what’s best for our country. It’s scary to think: Our country thinks this is best.”
Claire Mina
The popular vote made Claire Mina happy. Mina — a former legislative aide for a Democratic Chicago alderman and Hillary Clinton voter in 2016 who has cast her ballot for Trump in the elections since — believes being a Trump supporter will become less polarizing.
“I was never afraid to say I was Republican,” Mina said. “I was afraid to say I supported Trump because you come off as racist, no matter what, or far right. Now that more than half the people voted for him, maybe that rhetoric will tone down.”
Mina, 54, said she voted for policy not personality: While she said Trump is a poor orator who can be immature and petty, Mina believes he was the better candidate. She’s grown increasingly concerned about the economy, immigration, a lack of respect for the military and veterans, and foreign aid under the Biden administration. She hated the way Biden handled the withdrawal from Afghanistan and student loan forgiveness.
“I’m quite certain that no matter what juvenile dribble comes out of [Trump’s] mouth, it’s going to be better than what Kamala would have done,” Mina said.
Brett King
Brett King of North Dallas called the election results “disappointing.”
“I thought we would see through who Donald Trump was and that America would vote against him,” King said.
He does not support Trump or U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, but said he voted Republican down the rest of the ticket. The 48-year-old financial planner said he prefers for leaders to speak and act in a way he can explain to his children, something he finds very difficult for those two officials.
“We need to do better, as Americans, to bring forth better representatives,” he said. “There’s got to be better people to represent the American people, whether it be Republican or Democrat.”
Sergei Shakola
Trump’s political rhetoric reminded Sergei Shakola, 35, of the dictators he had lived under in Eastern Europe in his youth, he said.
That is why the Ann Arbor, Mich., resident cast his vote — his first since becoming a U.S. citizen more than a year ago after immigrating from Belarus — for Harris.
“The way he talked sounded familiar to me,” Shakola said in an interview in Dallas, where he was visiting Wednesday on a work trip.
Shakola said that, despite Harris’ loss, he would approach the next four years with an open mind. With the Republicans winning the presidency and securing the U.S. Senate (control of the U.S. House was undecided as of Wednesday afternoon), he said he was eager to see whether the party could make a positive impact.
Ricky Thrash
When Ricky Thrash walked into a Lake Highlands polling station Tuesday to vote for Harris, he felt the same as he had during the last two presidential cycles: cautiously optimistic.
The 40-year-old project manager voted for the vice president in part due to the overturning of federally enshrined abortion rights. Not long after seeing that the election was not going their way, he was talking with his mom. She was worried, so he tried to ease her concerns.
“We’ve been here before,” he told her. “He’s had four years at it and we all survived, so I think we’ll survive this one. We may not be happy with everything that he does or says, but we’ll tough out for four years.”
Thrash hopes the Democratic Party can rebound quickly. He said there are lessons Democrats can learn from the Republicans — mostly, how to be more “aggressive” in stating their mission and talking about the progress under their leadership.
“If you do good things, then it’s OK to bring attention to all the good things you’re doing and almost be halfway obnoxious about it,” he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.