There’s a passion that we need change – Democrats Abroad in Dublin

San Francisco native and first-year Trinity College political science student Morgan Hildula (18) remembers friends crying in the hallway of her secondary school the morning after the 2016 American presidential election.

She recalls the devastation on classmates’ faces – some of them undocumented immigrants – and the fear of what a Trump administration’s policies could mean for their futures.

Many of the teenage students were feeling first-hand, and perhaps for the first time in their lives, the social and psychological implications of a political election.

“Everyone was shell-shocked,” Hildula said. “I was so excited to cast a ballot this year after the disappointment of the 2016 election. I pre-registered when I was 16 online because I knew I couldn’t just be apathetic about it.”

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Hildula was one of more than 150 absentee voters gathered at the Democrats Abroad election watch party at the Arlington Hotel in Dublin Tuesday evening, preparing to stay up all night with her friend Jack Merriman (19), a native Dubliner and fellow Trinity student recently elected to the Labour Party’s International Affairs Council.

Merriman, who describes himself as an “international elections nerd,” has family in Chicago, and said he often stays up all night to watch poll predictions from elections outside of Ireland.

“It’s going to be a long night for me,” he joked. “One of the hopes I had coming here instead of locking myself in with Irish friends was seeing people with a greater stake in it than I have . . . If everything goes right and that blue wave comes in, I want to see that vindication and happiness.”

His dedication to staying up stems from two years ago, when he went to bed fully expecting Hillary Clinton to be elected the United States first female president before being awoken by his sister at about 5.30am with news of Trump’s impending triumph.

Merriman credits what he sees as a rise in rabble-rousing politics in Ireland over the past two years to the 2016 US presidential election, which he believes emboldened people with bigoted viewpoints and policies at the national level.

“US elections definitely have an impact on the political culture around the world,” he said. “I’m utterly terrified tonight won’t go well.”

The election impact loomed large for Florida retirees Larry and Ellen Misita, who watched with fading optimism as it became clear Andrew Gillum and Bill Nelson would lose gubernatorial and senate positions to Ron DeSantis and former Florida governor Rick Scott.

While the couple on holiday in Ireland both expressed concern regarding climate change and Florida’s red tide emergency, they were cheered by the event, which they thought captured the spirit and renewed activism of the Democratic Party worldwide.

“This is wonderful,” Larry Misita said. “Clearly there’s a passion out here that we need change. We need some sense of normalcy in our country. Trump and the republicans are tearing it apart.”

Democrats Abroad reported on Tuesday that the number of Americans voting abroad was up almost 800 per cent from 2014’s midterm election.

Carija Ihus (43), Vice Chair for Democrats Abroad Ireland, helped plan Tuesday’s event, and was one of many volunteers throughout Europe contributing to the more than 150,000 phone calls and 23,000 text messages sent to abroad Democrats this election season.

Ihus has lived in Dublin since 2010 and was present for 2016’s watch party at the Arlington Hotel, where 400 democrats gathered with cautious optimism, which eventually gave way to horror in an election morning nightmare.

“It was painful, to say the least,” she said. “Sometimes elections don’t go as you planned. This time around, Democrats are optimistic but it all depends on who shops at the polls, who is casting an absentee ballot and that the votes that are out there aren’t suppressed.”

Ihus grew up in Atlanta and has cast a vote in Georgia for most of her life.

While Democrat Stacey Abrams’s narrow defeat to Republican Brian Kemp in Georgia’s gubernatorial race was certainly a disheartening result, Ihus was adamant Tuesday’s party would not be a repeat of two years ago, where dry eyes were few and disheartened groans echoed throughout the room.

“Our hope going into the night is we’d love to see all of them get elected, but if that doesn’t happen, we’d like to see positive races that are ground breaking,” she said.

“We’re going to find something to celebrate.”

The results on Wednesday morning indicate that the Democrats have won control of the House of Representatives, however the party’s hoped-for “blue wave” failed to materialise as Republicans looked likely to increase their majority in the Senate.