Londoners ‘nervous but hopeful’ as nail-biting US election kicks off

Both Trump and Harris supporting Londoners are feeling ‘nervous but hopeful’ ahead of the US presidential election results.

Londoners at an overnight election watch party at a pub in Islington expressed optimism that their chosen candidate would win – and fear for the world if the opposing side won the White House.

The first polls close at 11pm (GMT) this evening, while vote counting in the first swing state of Georgia at midnight.

As fireworks celebrating Guy Fawkes Night loudly pop, people from far and wide gather anxiously in the Lexington pub in Angel to watch the election results as they roll in overnight.  

Metro found one Trump supporter in the pub, a Spanish engineer from Spain called Carlos who has lived in London for 10 years.

Carlos, 40, agrees with Trump’s plans to bring manufacturing back to America and hopes a Republican win will encourage European leaders to do the same.

He added: ‘He is looking after his country. We need to go for candidates like him who want to bring the country back to its last glory.

‘I wish we had a Trump in Spain and in the UK.’

Carlos, who has brought the distinctive red MAGA hat with him, is confident that the ‘energy is with’ a Trump victory but believes in the conspiracy that the 2020 election was stolen.

He said: ‘All of a sudden at 5 o’clock Biden went from losing to all of a sudden a spike in winning. It feels unnatural.’

If Trump is ahead this time around, the engineer thinks the same might happen again.

In 2020, US TV networks waited four days after election day to declare Joe Biden the winner, once the result in Pennsylvania had become clear.

In the Lexington, pub-goers are hoping they will know the result closer to 8am GMT, when Trump was declared President-Elect in 2016.

Standing next to Carlos is Daniel, 28, an American from New Jersey, who voted via email for Kamala Harris a few hours ago, says the polls are wrong and predicts a sweeping Democrat victory will be declared by tomorrow morning. 

‘I feel it in the air and the water,’ he adds.

The American, who has lived in the UK for 10 years, has even placed a £300 bet on that outcome and stands to win £750 if Harris reaches the White House.

His friend, Alexander, 28, from the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania, is donning a ‘Bernie’ shirt, after the left-wing Democrat presidential candidate in 2016 and 2020, Bernie Sanders.

Alexander likes Trump’s tax-cutting policies, but worries that Trump ‘would be a lot worse’ for the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, and says that the Republican candidate will cement conservative opinion on the country’s Supreme Court for 40 years.  

Layla, 27, is one of many women in the Lexington who are worried about the impact of a Trump victory on women’s and minority rights and is ‘holding her breath’ for a Harris victory.

She said: ‘The response will be a push to fascism, and there is already this push to fascism.

‘If it doesn’t go the Democrats way there will be this movement towards anti-women’s rights, anti-trans rights, anti-minority rights.

‘It is a fundamental human right to have access to medical care as and when you need it. If people don’t have that access, then so many people are going to die.’

She disagrees with some of the policies trumpeted by Harris, particularly around the war in the Middle East, but calls her the ‘better of two evils.’

Her friend Eleanor, 26, lived in Washington DC for all of her childhood and says this election season feels different for her and her female friends compared to four and eight years ago.

She said: ‘This election feels more personal.

‘Barriers we thought would never be broken, like the appeal of Row vs Wade, have now been broken. 

‘The stakes are now higher than they were in 2016. Everything Trump has threatened, which used to be hyperbolic, now feels possible.’

Eighty-one percent of Londoners have an ‘unfavourable’ view of Trump, according to a recent poll by YouGov.

The poll found that 68% of Londoners want Harris to win the November 5 election in comparison to 18% who prefer the former president.

While some Londoners will stay all night, others are hoping to get a flavour of the result before heading to bed.

William, 25, is hoping to head home at 1am but is not confident he will be able to sleep peacefully if the election remains on a knife edge.

He is meeting at the Lexington with a group of ‘New Liberals’. This contingent is pro-Harris but concerned most with the danger Trump poses to world security.

William said: ‘Trump is very dangerous for world security. If Trump is elected China will definitely look to invade Taiwan, and it will damage Ukraine. 

‘I am genuinely terrified how foreign autocrats will use the opportunity to expand whole NATO is no longer iron-clad.

‘Harris does excite me, but it is more about the danger of Trump.’

On offer to those staying overnight are American whiskeys and the choice of watching CNN or BBC, once the coverage of the results gets underway at 11pm.

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