The University of Oregon community watched the 2024 presidential results roll in with anticipation on Nov. 5. The race concluded with the re-election of former president Donald Trump, who led the Republican Party and won the race with 295 electoral college votes and 50.7% of the popular vote as of Nov. 8.

At a Nov. 7 Post-Election roundtable in the Ford Alumni Center, students, professors and some “election experts,” including former U.S. Representative for Oregon’s 4th Congressional District Peter DeFazio shared with the Daily Emerald their reactions and perspectives on the general election.

The roundtable was sponsored by the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics, and held a panel including DeFazio and UO professors Chandler James, Alison Gash, Regina Lawrence and Neil O’Brian. The roundtable was organized through a moderated question-and-answer session. 

Daniel Tichenor, the moderator of the event, kicked off the forum by stating that 90% of counties nationwide shifted their voting patterns to the ideological right compared to the 2020 general election. Tichenor did not specify where he got this fact, though the New York Times reported this same information. 

The attention then shifted to the panelists, who responded to questions about the election and its implications for college students and Americans.

James, an assistant professor of political science, criticized Trump’s campaign, calling it “racist” and “sexist.”

“Trump ran an unconventional campaign in that he was openly racist and sexist. What that said to me is that many of the norms that are constrained in a normal democracy are no longer relevant,” James said.

James also compared the educational background of voters. He said that college graduates have access to resources that make them more informed on government processes than the non-college-educated remainder of the population.

“College students are pretty sophisticated relative to the rest of the population,” James said. “So you know, people who are college graduates represent a minority, and so people [who] come here are relatively privileged and informed compared to the rest of the population.”

James also criticized the reliance on social media for information and advocated for academic and scholarly research instead.

“In my classes, I try to teach [students] these skills, teach them how to conduct research, teach them how to analyze data, analyze science, scientific research and whatnot. And then, you know, apply that to not only classwork, but also the rest of their lives,” James said.

During the election, some UO students utilized the critical thinking skills that James highlighted, including Beatrice Khan, a third-year Wayne Morris scholar majoring in history and English. 

“I tried to look at a broad variety of media reports and keep an open mind, looking at objective fact-based reporting from lots of media sources,” Khan said. 

Rose Bascom, a junior, criticized the role of influencers and inferred that social media dramatically impacted voter opinion. 

“I think that social media culture and the elevated platform of people like Andrew Tate and Charlie Kerr are now making it popular and cool to hate women.”

Tate and Kerr are both right-wing social media personalities.

One concern of James’ was the “misogyny in this election that can’t be dismissed.”

“Trump ran on being a man, and kind of made it seem unmanly to support Kamala. I also think it’s important to recognize that the Democratic Party has… not made it really compelling for young men. They haven’t been trying to go out and get this vote,” James said.

James said that there are steps and measures that could be taken to have the Democratic Party “a safe haven for guys.”

“I think that there is work that the Democratic Party can do to make the Democratic Party a safe haven for guys who play football, watch basketball, you know, drink beer, buy four wheels…,” James said.

DeFazio spoke to a different perspective on why the Democrats lost the 2024 presidential election, alluding to the shifting demographics within the party affecting this election and future ones.

“We [Democrats] are losing working-class people of every race and gender in the country,” DeFazio said. “The Democrats are the party of the working class. We cannot win elections on college-educated people and the elites.”

Gash, a professor of political science, commented on the voting patterns of Generation Z, who are “very much policy-focused and candidate-focused, and not partisan-focused.” 

“Twenty million voters stayed home, they didn’t feel relevant, they didn’t feel spoken to,” Gash said.

According to Gash, focusing on collective action can combat voter apathy.

“I think the way forward is to focus on your communities… it’s to engage in coalition building at the local level,” Gash said. “That has to be where the focus is, because that’s ultimately going to get our most vulnerable communities through the next four years, but it’s also going to have a payoff in terms of how the Democratic Party reorganizes and how progressives reorganize.”

Abdirahim Mahmoud is a senior political science major who was born in Nairobi, Kenya, but grew up in Tigard, Ore. He reflected on the post-election campus environment. 

“​I do feel like the next day on campus was kind of sad. It was just straight frustration,” Mahmoud said.

Khan also said she felt that election night had hit the entire city.  

“I was going to bed pretty late around midnight, and I heard two people just screaming out on campus. I think that pretty much sums up the energy on Wednesday. I didn’t see many people on campus. A lot of people were missing from class,” Khan said.

Bridget Reynolds, a freshman, revealed how individuals’ shocked reactions surrounding the results were echoed on various social media platforms.

“A lot of people I follow voted for Kamala, and they would post big, long paragraphs, a lot of them just completely cutting off any Trump supporter saying, unfollow me if you voted for him. I saw one person say, with the utmost disrespect, I don’t like you,” Reynolds said.

Bryce Mayer, a junior studying economics and accounting, said he grew up in a very right-leaning environment in Salt Lake City, Utah, and casted his absentee ballot for Trump.

“Coming here, I’ve been exposed to a lot more of the left ideals and more Democrat ideas. I think for me, personally, like my values really haven’t changed too much,” Mayer said.

Mayer said his beliefs are heavily influenced by outside sources such as social media.

“Social media is where I get the majority of my news, which is probably not a great thing, just because it is so easy to influence it,” Mayer said. “So I think it played a massive role in just my understanding of what both candidates were fighting for.”

Bryson Petterborg, president of UO College Democrats, spoke to the energy surrounding the election.

“I think there’s a lot of organizing energy as a result of the election not going the way that we wanted to, and a lot of that is driven by people being really scared about what’s to come, but there’s definitely a lot more energy around wanting to make things better right now,” Petterborg said.

According to Petterborg, a main concern of the UO College Democrats is reproductive rights and what actions the group can take to address their concern.

“When it comes to reproductive rights, we really want to support the Students for Choice campaign to get medicated abortion on campus. I think the [Young Democratic Socialists of America] socialist feminist committee is also doing stuff with that,” Petterborg said.

Petterborg added that there were many notions among voters, specifically Oregon voters, that voting “didn’t matter” or “wasn’t necessary” because of their location.

Petterborg referred to the proposed Oregon Ballot Measures. Ballot Measures 115 and 119 were both passed. Ballot Measures 116, 117 and 118 were not passed.

Ballot Measure 115 established an impeachment process for elected state officials and Ballot Measure 119 required cannabis businesses to have a “labor peace agreement” to receive or renew a new license.

“It’s really important for people to recognize that it’s not just the presidential election that you were voting in. We had a lot of really close races in the House [of Representatives] for our national elections. [Congresswoman] Val Hoyle was a close race, [Congresswoman] Andrea Salinas was [in] a really close race and then also the ballot measures,” Petterborg said.

The Daily Emerald reached out to the College Republicans at the University of Oregon for comment but did not receive a response.