Like each new Amer­i­can pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, this one was the longest in his­to­ry. Elec­tion Day was the cul­mi­na­tion of 17 months’ worth of anx­i­ety, all com­pressed into six hours of pun­dit­ry, memes and math. Less than two hours after Mid­west polls closed, Pantsuit Nation began to con­vulse. This wasn’t sup­posed to happen.

"I just think that this whole apocalyptic mood is ensuring that nothing is going to change, and that's what I fear the most."

A Sur­vey Mon­key inter­ac­tive map showed Hillary Clin­ton as the over­whelm­ing­ly pre­ferred can­di­date for reg­is­tered Mil­len­ni­al vot­ers (18 to 34 years old). The map, based on online polling from Oct. 25 to Nov. 7, showed that had only Mil­len­ni­als vot­ed, the elec­tion would have been a blowout: Clin­ton with 473 elec­toral votes, Don­ald Trump with 32. Accord­ing to the New York Times exit polls, Clin­ton beat Trump among vot­ers 30-years-old and younger by 18 points — 55 per­cent to 37 percent.

Inter­views con­duct­ed by In These Times with stu­dents at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, and with two addi­tion­al col­lege-age vot­ers from Ohio and Indi­ana, reflect­ed that strong sup­port for Clin­ton among young peo­ple. The out­come inspired intense fear that the Trump admin­is­tra­tion will repeal Oba­macare and gut poli­cies and Supreme Court deci­sions that pro­tect against dis­crim­i­na­tion and ensure the right to abor­tion. How­ev­er, as the ini­tial shock wears off, opti­mism is ris­ing for some, based on the con­crete vic­to­ries achieved — the elec­tion of sev­er­al women of col­or to state and fed­er­al posi­tions, for exam­ple — and the poten­tial for hold­ing con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­cy-mak­ers account­able in the 2018 midterm elections.

Gabi Mul­der, a 21-year-old senior at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go and a Clin­ton vot­er, describes an Elec­tion Night gath­er­ing that mor­phed from fes­tive to somber.

As it became clear that Trump ​“was ahead by so much and real­ly close to get­ting 270,” says Mul­der, ​“it was all just peo­ple sit­ting around in silence, try­ing to com­fort those who looked shell-shocked, or sit­ting there not want­i­ng to go to bed yet because we were too upset.”

Dis­crim­i­na­tion and hate speech against minor­i­ty groups, on the rise since the elec­tion, are a par­tic­u­lar source of anx­i­ety for women of col­or and those who iden­ti­fy as LGBTQ, as Mul­der does.

Tuyaa Mont­gomery, a Siber­ian indige­nous woman and 20-year-old junior at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, is a woman of col­or whose moth­er is an immi­grant. ​“I’m scared about the aggres­sive rise in white suprema­cy and nation­al­ism that I think has always exist­ed in our coun­try, but Trump gave them some­one to ral­ly behind,” she says. ​“Trump and Mike Pence’s pol­i­cy on Planned Par­ent­hood and repro­duc­tive rights are abysmal. I’m wor­ried about my repro­duc­tive rights in this coun­try as well as my racial iden­ti­ty.” Mont­gomery vot­ed for Clin­ton but was a Bernie Sanders sup­port­er in the primaries.

Here are reac­tions from oth­er students.

Austin Brown, 21-year-old senior at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, Clin­ton voter.

“The day after [the elec­tion], I went to [see] my friend who works at Har­ris Café and she came out from behind the counter and hugged me and start­ed cry­ing. I did­n’t expect it, but in hind­sight, I also wasn’t sur­prised. And then lat­er, there were so many moments of sol­i­dar­i­ty, but also feel­ings of tragedy being instan­ti­at­ed everywhere.”

Isa­iah New­man, 20-year-old junior at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, Clin­ton voter.

“Tues­day night felt to me like — and I know this is being over­dra­mat­ic — but in a lot of ways Tues­day night felt to me like the death of the opti­mism of an entire gen­er­a­tion. I know that’s not real­ly true, I know there are plen­ty of peo­ple who are still opti­mistic, I know there are plen­ty of peo­ple in our gen­er­a­tion who vot­ed for Trump. … And their opti­mism isn’t dead.”

Daniel Schwartz, 20-year-old junior at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, Clin­ton voter.

“Rel­a­tive­ly opti­mistic. Not that I think Trump is going to be a good pres­i­dent or any­thing, but just com­pared to every­one else around me — com­plete despair, thought it was the end of the world. … You know, it’s obvi­ous­ly not good, but I think that most of what he would do would be reversible in a decade. I guess the only thing that I’m still con­cerned about is the environment.”

Sam­mie Tay­lor, 21-year-old March Super­mar­ket employ­ee in Indi­ana, Trump voter.

“I think ini­tial­ly, I was quite hon­est­ly kind of excit­ed because, until Tues­day, I had nev­er vot­ed before and I had nev­er watched the elec­tion results come in before, so I was kind of like that lit­tle kid on Christ­mas Eve. … And then, a few min­utes lat­er, I don’t know whether to call it in shock or in awe, but I was kind of a lit­tle — I didn’t have any words for a lit­tle bit. … I bet I would feel the same way if Hillary was elect­ed. I bet I would feel the same way if John­son was elect­ed. I don’t want to call it relief, I wasn’t griev­ing. I was just like, ​‘Ok, Don­ald Trump’s our president.’”

Dylan, whose last name is with­held as he is a ser­vice mem­ber, 22-year-old, Ohio, Clin­ton voter.

“First thing that came with it was numb­ness. I hon­est­ly couldn’t believe it. I had been mon­i­tor­ing FiveThir­tyEight, Nate Silver’s pro­jec­tions, for a while, and he was show­ing a much clos­er race than any of the oth­er polls. But I didn’t expect it.”

Willam­i­na Groething, 21-year-old senior at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, Clin­ton voter.

“There have been a sur­pris­ing num­ber of hate crimes report­ed in the last 24 to 48 hours, which I did not expect so abrupt­ly or so brazen­ly. And while I am not a minor­i­ty, I am a woman, and see­ing some­body who has been accused by women in the dou­ble dig­its of sex­u­al assault, and who is going to tri­al for child rape in I think less than a month, it just feels like … not that I have no auton­o­my over my body, but that there’s no recourse if some­one were to vio­late that. And that’s very scary.”

Kather­ine Ordóez, 21-year-old senior at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, Clin­ton voter.

“Cer­tain­ly, as the night went on — I should say dragged on — the ini­tial wave of opti­mism grew calmer and calmer. As the elec­tion was draw­ing to a close, there was cer­tain­ly a lot more pan­ic in the air, there was scream­ing at some point, lots of cry­ing. It had felt like, I had to imag­ine, learn­ing that your pres­i­dent had been shot. Some­thing like that.”

Charis­sa Newkirk, 21-year-old senior at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, Clin­ton voter.

“I guess I had already kind of pre­pared myself for when [Clin­ton] final­ly con­ced­ed and they called it. Just because they had the elec­toral map up, all these states were pulling red, I just kind of knew that it was going to hap­pen. But when I final­ly had the alert that she had con­ced­ed, I felt a lit­tle bit defeat­ed. But at least I pre­pared myself for that point. I didn’t burst into tears or any­thing, just defeated.”

All ten of the inter­vie­wees here were first-time vot­ers (for a pres­i­den­tial bal­lot) in 2016. Sev­en of the ten respon­dents did not vote in the pri­maries. The major­i­ty note that before 2012, they had not fol­lowed or vol­un­teered in the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions. In some sense, this elec­tion was a dou­ble first for them: the first time as active, vot­ing par­tic­i­pants — and the first time los­ing (all but one vot­ed for Hillary Clin­ton). Many agree that the fear this elec­tion has pro­duced also feels new.

“I was very fear­ful,” says Newkirk, a mixed-race per­son of col­or. ​“I was fear­ful for my reac­tion, pos­si­bly, if I saw some­one who had Trump signs or some­thing. I hon­est­ly felt fear of how peo­ple were view­ing me as a black per­son. And I hadn’t felt that in a very long time.”

Dylan, a self-described ​“Eisen­how­er Repub­li­can,” says he is unable to sup­port the cur­rent Repub­li­can Par­ty. If it con­tin­ues to uphold poli­cies that threat­en women’s auton­o­my and nor­mal­ize dis­crim­i­na­tion against peo­ple of col­or and LGBTQ-iden­ti­fy­ing peo­ple, he says, he will con­tin­ue to cast lib­er­al votes. Dylan vot­ed for John Kasich in the Ohio primaries.

“A lot of [Trump sup­port­ers] just felt extreme­ly dis­en­fran­chised, and they can see where I’m com­ing from,” he says. ​“On the oth­er hand, there are quite a few who look at me as a trai­tor. Who believe I’m a clos­et lib­er­al, and that I am a Repub­li­can in name only. I’ve nev­er real­ly been referred to as a RINO before, I usu­al­ly reserve that for the Tea Par­ty [laughs]. So it’s been a mix of both good and bad from the Trump camp.”

Both Newkirk and Schwartz have seen a sim­i­lar dynam­ic with­in the pre­dom­i­nate­ly lib­er­al Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go cam­pus. They see the polit­i­cal bub­ble as both a bar­ri­er to progress and as an ampli­fi­ca­tion of the emo­tion­al reac­tion from Clin­ton voters.

“Peo­ple blew a lot of this out of pro­por­tion. … Now I see a bunch of peo­ple who want to punch Trump sup­port­ers,” Newkirk says. ​“We do have polit­i­cal lead­ers that are will­ing to stand by POC, women. That’s why we have lob­by­ists, spe­cial inter­est groups. … I just think that this whole apoc­a­lyp­tic mood is ensur­ing that noth­ing is going to change, and that’s what I fear the most.”

Tay­lor, a Trump vot­er but unaf­fil­i­at­ed with any polit­i­cal par­ty, was not enthu­si­as­tic about either can­di­date. She notes that, as a rape sur­vivor, it was ​“dif­fi­cult to fill in one bub­ble over the oth­er,” due to Trump’s com­ments about women. But Clinton’s han­dling of the pri­vate email scan­dal and the Beng­hazi attacks helped con­vince her to vote Trump. She also feels that it’s time for ​“anoth­er point of view” in the White House. Tay­lor doesn’t believe Trump will gain a sec­ond term, and because of that, she expects lit­tle to come from his pres­i­den­cy in terms of pol­i­cy changes.

“By the time any­thing that Don­ald Trump does while he’s in office actu­al­ly comes into effect, and you can see that he did any­thing, the next four years are gonna be done.”

While he does not share Taylor’s expec­ta­tion that Trump’s pres­i­den­cy will not result in any sig­nif­i­cant pol­i­cy changes, Schwartz says that he looks to the 2018 midterm elec­tions as a source of optimism.

“It’s scary that he and the Repub­li­cans hold all of the branch­es of gov­ern­ment now, but in a cou­ple of years, with the midterm elec­tions, hope­ful­ly peo­ple will turn out to vote,” Schwartz says. ​“And if Trump is as awful as peo­ple expect him to be, or 50 per­cent as awful as peo­ple expect him to be, there will be a lot of turnover in Con­gress and then, at least, his reign of ter­ror will be stopped.”

Oth­ers have looked at ways of voic­ing their oppo­si­tion by sup­port­ing orga­ni­za­tions they see as threat­ened by a Trump pres­i­den­cy. A Google doc­u­ment com­piled by attor­ney Kara Hurvitz con­tain­ing legal advice on immi­gra­tion, dis­abil­i­ty rights, LGBTQ rights and more has cir­cu­lat­ed on social media in the wake of the elec­tion. Mul­der is look­ing into donat­ing to orga­ni­za­tions com­mit­ted to immi­grant rights, women’s rights and LGBTQ rights, among oth­ers. She’s also inter­est­ed in apply­ing for an intern­ship with the ACLU. Sev­er­al of the indi­vid­u­als inter­viewed here plan to attend protests, but have not done so yet.

In the days fol­low­ing the elec­tion, there are also threads of opti­mism and accep­tance mixed in with the anx­i­ety. Ordóñez, a les­bian Lati­na and first gen­er­a­tion Cuban-Amer­i­can, notes that ​“Don­ald Trump isn’t a text­book Repub­li­can, and not all of his poli­cies would be con­sid­ered con­ser­v­a­tive. And that both­ers a lot of Repub­li­cans. That being said, it’s not your grand­fa­ther’s GOP. I think there’s been slow but real progress in bring­ing the GOP to the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, and more aligned with things that most vot­ers want.”

Oth­ers have cit­ed a num­ber of races as sources of com­fort and opti­mism: The elec­tions of vet­er­an and woman of col­or Tam­my Duck­worth (D‑IL) to the Sen­ate; the first Soma­li-Amer­i­can, Ilhan Omar, to the Min­neso­ta House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives; and Kamala Har­ris, the sec­ond African-Amer­i­can woman elect­ed to the Sen­ate, pro­vide some con­so­la­tion to those with deep con­cerns over the elec­tion results.

The path, how­ev­er, is still uncer­tain. Some col­lege-age vot­ers refuse to accept the Repub­li­can can­di­date as pres­i­dent, while oth­ers are reluc­tant to say the words ​“Pres­i­dent-elect Trump.” It doesn’t sound right just yet.

It took Groething eight sec­onds to respond when asked, ​“Do you accept Don­ald Trump as pres­i­dent?” Ulti­mate­ly, she said yes.

“The word accept is dif­fi­cult, because I can accept the num­bers that tell me that the Elec­toral Col­lege should allo­cate enough del­e­gates to Don­ald Trump to afford him the pres­i­den­cy of the Unit­ed States. How­ev­er, it’s very dif­fi­cult to accept that per­son as a leader, and as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of my coun­try on an inter­na­tion­al stage. So, I think at this point, I intel­lec­tu­al­ly accept, or rather acknowl­edge, the results of the elec­tion. But I am hav­ing a very dif­fi­cult time emo­tion­al­ly accept­ing the results.”