Election 2016 is in the books, for better or worse.

Now, the important question:

Where do we go from here?

Donald Trump’s win has progressives around the country feeling depression, fear, anger, and despair – especially among Muslims, Latinos, African-Americans, immigrants, LGBT people, women, and other groups that came under direct attack during the campaign. Many are protesting – there have been large anti-Trump demonstrations in cities nationwide – while many others are calling for conciliation (following the lead of Hillary Clinton and President Obama, in their respective speeches Wednesday). Across the board, though, progressives are committing themselves to opposing Trump’s agenda, especially if those groups who got attacked during the campaign remain under attack during his presidency.

(Bernie Sanders summed it up in a brief statement issued Wednesday: “To the degree that Mr. Trump is serious about pursuing policies that improve the lives of working families in this country, I and other progressives are prepared to work with him. To the degree that he pursues racist, sexist, xenophobic and anti-environment policies, we will vigorously oppose him.”)

Jean Bolduc is a political commentator and the host of “Weekend Watercooler” on WCHL. She discussed the election – and the future – with Aaron Keck on Wednesday afternoon.

 

One group that’s been under fire this week (albeit perhaps unfairly) has been pollsters. Polling outfits across the country were nearly unanimous in asserting that Clinton had a 3- to 4-point national lead over Trump – and while they weren’t actually off by much (Clinton won the popular vote by about 1 percent), the difference was enough to flip the Electoral College race the other way. The 2-point error is in line with polling errors from previous elections, but 2016 marks the first time in many years that pollsters failed to call the presidential winner in advance.

Tom Jensen is the director of Raleigh-based Public Policy Polling. He discussed the election results and the lessons learned from 2016 with Aaron Keck on Wednesday.

 

Election 2016 isn’t quite over yet: there are several races on the state level in North Carolina that are still too close to call, even though all the early votes and Election Day ballots have been counted. Democrat Roy Cooper leads Republican Pat McCrory by about 5,000 votes in the race for governor; Democrat Beth Wood holds an even narrower lead over Republican Chuck Stuber in the race for state auditor; and Democrat Josh Stein has a slightly larger lead – 21,000 votes – over Republican Buck Newton in the race to succeed Cooper as attorney general. Those leads are likely to hold up, but it’s not certain: provisional ballots still need to be counted and certified, and thousands of absentee ballots are still arriving by mail. (Provided they’re postmarked by Election Day, the state will accept absentee ballots through Monday the 14th – or through next Thursday the 17th, for overseas and military ballots.) The county-level vote counts will be officially certified on Friday the 18th – and even then, candidates can still request a recount. The State Board of Elections won’t certify the final tallies until November 29.)

State-level election results here.

Elections expert Gerry Cohen told WCHL that absentee and provisional ballots tend to cancel each other out: absentee ballots tend to come from Republican voters, but provisional ballots tend to come from Democrats, so it’s not likely they’ll affect the final tallies that much. (But it’s not impossible – especially in a race as close as the gubernatorial election, where the candidates are separated by just a tiny fraction of a percent.)

On Election Day – before the results were in – Aaron Keck spoke with former U.S. Senator Kay Hagan…

 

…current DNC chair Donna Brazile…

 

…and Zerlina Maxwell, the director of progressive media for the Clinton campaign.