With election season now over, and results pouring in throughout the country, New York residents and Baruch students are reeling from the results.
New York has reliably voted blue in every presidential election since 1988, and a large portion of the state’s votes come from the New York City area which played a huge role in Kamala Harris securing New York’s 28 electoral votes.
This year, the margin was a lot tighter than in previous elections, and while New York City continued its blue track record, the majority of the country voted red.
According to NBC News, Kamala Harris won in New York by 11.5 percentage points with a 55.5% majority, but in 2020 Joe Biden won with 61% of the vote.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton won with 59% of the vote. This means that in New York, Harris’ win was the worst statewide performance for a Democrat since 1988, the same year when Michael Dukakis barely edged out over George H. W. Bush with 51.6% of the state’s popular vote.
This significant drop-off represented a shift to the right for New York.
Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate for the last three elections, received about 38% of the New York popular vote in both 2016 and 2020, but had his numbers skyrocket to almost 44% in this year’s election, a difference of more than 400,000 voters.
Such a stark change raises questions about what influenced so many voters to change their decision.
David Miranda, a former Democrat who voted for Trump, shared his concerns about the current state of the country.
“America’s got to get back to what America was when I was a young kid, it was a beautiful thing…Now I don’t know America anymore. It has changed a lot,” Miranda told ABC7.
Baruch College students were apprehensive about speaking on the election publicly.
When asked to give their thoughts about the election many students declined to comment or give their names.
Some even expressed that they feared saying something controversial on the Internet and being targeted for it.
However, there were a few who were willing to share their thoughts.
Alvi Khan, a junior at Baruch, stressed how crucial the right to vote is.
“It’s extremely important to vote and get your voice heard,” they told The Ticker.
