Election Day 2024 in NYC: Anxiety, dread and cautious optimism as voters cast ballots for president

New Yorkers came to the polls Tuesday in a final push fueled by a mix of anxiety, dread and a bit of cautious optimism voters in the Democratic stronghold lined up to cast Election Day ballots amid the prospect of a second term for former president Donald Trump.
“I’m really nervous,” Nidhi Hebbar, 34, said after casting her ballot for Vice President Kamala Harris at the Brooklyn Museum on Eastern Parkway Tuesday morning. “It feels like eight years ago.”
That’s when Donald Trump, Queens real estate scion and reality TV star, won the White House in a surprise electoral college victory over Hillary Clinton, changing the landscape of mainstream American politics.
“I feel a little bit of dread — I’m pretty worried about what a Trump presidency might mean,” said 47-year-old David May, who also supported Harris.
Trump’s increasingly ominous rhetoric, such as saying he might use the military to combat the “enemy within,” have escalated fears across the nation.
“I can’t say its a day that I feel a great deal of democratic spirit,” May said. “Our democracy is precarious at best.”
The Brooklynite said he felt it was “almost impossible” to imagine Trump winning the popular vote, but worried the electoral college might tilt in his favor.
“I voted for democracy, and for women’s rights, and rights for everybody else,” said Harris-supporter Era Bani, 41, who told the Daily News she flew back from a trip to visit friends in Spain in order to vote on Election Day.
Asked how she felt the election would go, Bani said she was “a little nervous,” and pointed to security preparations in Washington D.C.
“When they put up fences around the Capitol, you start to worry,” she said.
Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building on January 6, 2021 in an effort to stop the certification of President Biden’s electoral victory — an effort for which Trump himself is facing federal charges for allegedly inciting the mob.
Another Brooklyn voter and Harris supporter, 40-year-old Mickey Robinson, told The News he was “cautiously optimistic” that the Vice President would prevail.
“I think it’s the only right choice,” Robinson said.
“I have a hard time understanding why so many people are undecided when just four years ago the other candidate said we should bleach our bodies to get rid of [COVID-19,]” he added — a suggestion Trump made in the early days of the pandemic that he later tried to claim was a joke.
In Jamaica Hills, Queens — not far from where the former president grew up — several New Yorkers said they were backing Trump. “I voted for Trump,” said Mark Nash, 69. “I’m concerned about the people that don’t belong here.”
Sefa Khyer, a 36-year-old Queens resident who works for the FDNY, said she was concerned about the long-term future of the economy.
“I want our kids to get jobs — I don’t want jobs to go outside the country,” she said.
“Trumps the guy.”
“I think he’ll win,” she added, “I have a feeling.”
A few blocks south, in Jamaica, Ayesha Chowdhury, 21, said she had cast her first-ever vote for Harris.
“I’m nervous,” she said. “A lot of people are not as informed as they want to be.”
“They’ll be like, ‘Oh I’m gonna vote for him,’” she said of Trump supporters. “You don’t even know why you’re voting — It freaks me out.”
“This man is scary,” she continued. “This man has scary thoughts and people on his side have scary thoughts. And if he’s elected they will make that s–t come true.”
Shahnoor Qurashi, a 60-year-old limo driver in Jamaica, said he’d voted for Harris as well.
“A lot of my friends are voting for Trump, because they say he is good for the economy and all these things,” Qurashi said. “But he’s lying too much, and bullsh–ting. I do not like him,” he added with a laugh.
Up in Harlem, Danielle Sutton, a 27-year-old AI policy consultant, said she had “a lot of fear and uncertainty going into [the election].”
Sutton wouldn’t share who she voted for, but said she feared another Trump presidency.
“We know what [Donald Trump] is from before,” she said. “We didn’t really think it was gonna happen, and now we really know that it might actually happen, which makes it scarier.”
Back in Brooklyn, 37-year-old Sam Egendorf said that, even though he and his wife had voted for Harris, he understood those who weren’t voting.
“I’m more indifferent about this election than maybe I’ve ever been,” he said outside the Brooklyn Museum.
Egendorf said he supported the Biden administration’s efforts to better protect consumers through the Federal Trade Commission, but he worried Harris might represent a rightward shift.
“Dick Cheney endorsed Kamala,” Egendorf said of the hawkish former Republican veep. “It’s terrifying to see neocons line up behind Kamala.”
One Brooklyn voter, who asked to be identified only by her first name, Tasha, said she “didn’t care for” either candidate, and wouldn’t say who she cast a ballot for.
“My main objective is [just] to vote,” the 57-year-old said. “As a black person, we didn’t always have the chance to vote — why throw my vote away?”