Donald Trump was elected as the 47th president of the United States after sweeping several battleground states. The Republicans also gained control of the U.S. Senate and currently have the lead in the House of Representatives.

This is the first time a Republican presidential candidate has won the popular vote since 2004. Trump is also the second president, after Grover Cleveland, to ever serve non-consecutive terms.

U.S. Government and U.S. History teacher Steve Foug said he was surprised by the outcome of the landslide election given multiple polls from the media predicting a tight race.

“He’s winning over people in big cities that have been democratic playgrounds for decades,” Foug said. “Focusing on identity might be a losing strategy in terms of winning votes because one strategist was saying last night that it seems to be coalescing around class and money.”

Junior Tarika Pillay, who leans toward the Democratic party, agreed that the outcome was unexpected.

“I wasn’t expecting Trump to win by the margin that he won,” Pillay said. “I thought for sure (Harris) was going to have a really strong hold or she was going to really fight for her ground. But as I was watching the election and I was looking at all the stats, I knew that, no matter how much we hoped she would pull through, at the end of the day, Trump was going to win.”

Foug said the Democrats’s decision to change candidates over the summer may have led to their loss in the election. 

“The Democrats seem to be disconnected and can’t find a winning candidate from all that enthusiasm that was happening over the summer,” Foug said. “Republicans are just being led around by an individual. I like the idea of efficiency of having a party in charge of the House, Senate and the presidency, (but) you need that adversarial system to force the best ideas to the surface and get compromised.”

Foug said he was puzzled by the low voter turnout in this election year, particularly in light of the extensive discussions on social media. According to The Washington Post, although this year’s turnout was the second highest of the past century, it still fell short of the record set in 2020.

“Voter turnout means everything, win or lose,” Foug said. “I’m not sure if he got any more total votes than last time. I wonder how much voter turnout affected this, which is weird to me because I feel like this election was on everyone’s mind.”

Pillay said many youth voices were not well-represented because a majority weren’t old enough to vote.

“It was really important to take into account this new generation, and I think a majority of us did vote for Harris, but, obviously — people in the working class — there’s so many more of them,” Pillay said. “There were more people who were screwed over by Biden, unfortunately, who were rooting for Trump this time, so Gen Z was just overridden.”

Foug said he is interested in seeing how the two political parties are evolving over time.

“What this Democratic Party stands for, what this Republican Party stands for — those are two interesting shifts that we’re going to see, maybe as a result of this election,” Foug said. “We’re right in the middle of that shift right now … Democrats seem to be accounting for a different group than they did four, eight, 40 years ago. Same with Republicans.”

Pillay said she is concerned about how Trump’s presidency will shape the country’s future due to his extremely conservative campaign.

“He wants to strip values away from certain types of people, and that’s not what America needs right now, especially since we are just getting off four years of COVID,” Pillay said. “Our economy is still recovering, (so) going into the world with a president like Trump in the next four years is really going to affect our work opportunities and how we live our daily lives.”

On the other hand, junior Dominic Hernandez, who leans toward the Republican party, said he feels hopeful about Trump’s second term.

“The past four years, the country has been going in a backward way,” Hernandez said. “Now that Trump is president again, we’re going to pick things up. The country will finally get back on track, and the economy will get better.”

Hernandez said he hopes Trump will prioritize bolstering the economy.

“Every day, I hear my friends complain about how expensive groceries are due to inflation,” Hernandez said. “However, I think that things like that might change in the coming months. I think he might pass bills to better the economy and lower inflation so families like my own are able to afford more essentials.”

Pillay said the outcome of Trump’s second term will transform the way younger Americans view politics.

“We’re super divided as students,” Pillay said. “I know people who absolutely love politics, and I know people who cannot stand it. If Trump changes our world, and Trump makes it impossible for us to live, we’re not going to feel really positive about politics. We’re not going to think about it as a good thing. We’re not going to think about it as a way to change the world. We’re going to think about it as a big enemy that we need to get rid of.”

Pillay said this election helped her realize how important her future vote would be.

“While I was watching the election, it really occurred (to me) that literally every vote counts,” Pillay said. “(Being) based in the big states that have the big votes, if you make a difference in that, you make a difference in the whole election.”