Harris Camp Deflated by Trump Lead With 3 Swing States Still Up for Grabs

Washington, D.C. — Supporters of Vice President Kamala Harris were deflated Tuesday night, but they were not giving up hope as they streamed out of her Election Night party around midnight.

Former President Trump held a lead in the presidential race, but results in three key swing states — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — remained up in the air.

Harris decided not to speak as her path to the presidency shrank.

Thousands of people packed into The Yard at Howard University, Harris’ alma mater, for what they hoped would be a victory party. Before polls had closed across the country, it was clearly a different kind of political event. Music by hip-hop artists, including Kendrick Lamar, Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B, blared from the speakers, and members of the Divine Nine, a group of historically Black fraternities and sororities, danced and put on musical performances.

Brandon McCaskill was one of those dancers. He and two friends wore matching maroon blazers with the insignia of their fraternity, the Xi Chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi. He said having a candidate who attended Howard was energizing.

“I think it’s extremely encouraging and exciting for all students to see somebody that looks like us, has been in our shoes, has walked in our yard, sat in our classrooms about to be, hopefully, the president of the United States,” he said. “It’s a beautiful thing to see.”

Candace Drummond, another Howard alumnus, was at the event with her friend Christina Jackson. The two met more than 20 years ago at the school, and Drummond flew from Atlanta to be at the party, saying she could not have imagined as a young Black woman seeing someone like Harris running for president. Not just a woman of color, but “a Black woman that went to [an] HBCU, raised by a single mom, and who has a similar upbringing to a lot of people who attend Howard.”

“It’s emotional, unreal — it just feels so much like home,” Drummond said of being at Howard. “I feel really represented in this moment. I’m so grateful to be here.”

Jackson said she and Drummond both have daughters and were excited to exercise their right to vote this year.

“It’s a gift to live in a country where you have the right to disagree with leadership,” she said. “And I think that that gets lost sometimes. We take those freedoms for granted.”

As the night wore on and more states were called for Trump, the crowd’s energy waned. Still, loud cheers erupted when a state was called for Harris.

California Sen. Laphonza Butler, who helped run Kamala Harris’s unsuccessful 2019 campaign for the Democratic nomination, was at the party with her daughter, wanting to share the night with her. Butler said the tight race was no surprise.

“The vice president has been clear that she was running this campaign as an underdog. She knew that,” Butler said. “We knew that when you only have 107 days to make your case to the American people — that against someone who’s been running for nine years — you have a lot of ground to make up.

“We feel solid about the case that we’ve made for the vice president. The contrast that is clear between her and former President Trump and now is in the hands of the American people. And I trust the American people to make decisions that they feel like they’re in the best interest of the country.”

Kelly Dais, a Harris supporter from Los Angeles, was still feeling good about Harris’s chances after midnight.

“It’s not over yet,” she said. “I believe we’re going to get some strong returns later. But for now, we’re going to just rest up because we got a lot of work to do in this country.”

Howard alumnus Yvette Watson of Maryland was with her friends, decked out in green and pink Alpha Kappa Alpha gear, the sorority Harris is part of. She said her spirits were still high.

“I think we’re prayerful, because we still have a lot of votes to count tonight. So we are not throwing in the towel until all of the votes have been counted,” she said.

The polls have been neck-in-neck since Harris’ unexpected July entry into the presidential race. President Joe Biden’s decision to step aside put the Democratic ticket in play in Sunbelt states like Arizona and Nevada, broadening their potential path to victory. But the race appeared stubbornly close in the final weeks of the campaign.

Harris would become the first woman president if she wins. She’d also be the first president of Black and South Asian descent. But she’s talked very little about her gender or racial identity on the campaign trail, instead focusing on issues like the economy, reproductive rights and what she framed as Trump’s fascistic tendencies and the threat he poses to democracy.

Harris, who was born in Berkeley and spent much of her young life in the East Bay, started her career as an Alameda County prosecutor. She was elected San Francisco district attorney in 2004, then California attorney general in 2010. She was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016 after the retirement of longtime Sen. Barbara Boxer.

Harris ran briefly for president in 2019, but her campaign, which launched in front of Oakland City Hall, didn’t gain traction. Biden named her as his running mate in August 2020.

She’s the first Californian nominated on a major party ticket since Ronald Reagan in 1984. She jumped into the race about a month after Biden’s disastrous debate performance against Trump prompted widespread calls for him not to seek reelection.