In the days leading up to the presidential election, with many polls pointing to a Kamala Harris win for the US presidency, many people in coastal cities and college towns expected to be celebrating on election night.
Instead, Donald Trump, a convicted felon, made an improbable comeback to become the country's 47th president.
"I am under the realisation that the country has spoken, and as an LGBTQ person and as someone who believes that women and people of any gender deserve the same rights, does it matter? And the country wants to go on thinking climate change doesn't matter?" a woman wearing an abortion rights shirt told The New Arab through tears following the projected election results.
"The country has spoken, and they don't care about anyone or anything or any human rights. All they care about is infinite growth and regressive gender ideas. And if that's where the country's at, I don't know where to keep going from here," said the woman, not wanting to share her name. She added that she does expect there to be elections in the future, but not real elections, similar to what takes place in illiberal democracies.
"I still believe in the promise of America, even if right now is not the time that promise will be realised," she said, fighting tears.
Jason Backrak, who said he happily voted for Harris, seemed to be taking the projected results more in stride.
"If we put someone like that into office, we deserve the repercussions," he told TNA. "I think we're going to be OK as a country. I'm going to wake up tomorrow and see what's happening."
A man at a watch party at a bar in San Francisco, told TNA he believed voters chose Trump because they weren't thinking about the future but only the present. He suggested that if people sat down at a table together, they would find that they would have more in common than they thought.
The bar played theme songs related to the election results, as customers emptied out into the cold air and largely empty streets.
Overall, the mood across major urban areas, the country's Democratic strongholds, were sombre on Tuesday night. Harris had planned to address supporters at a watch party at the historically Black college of Howard University in Washington, DC.
But by the end of Tuesday night, she hadn't spoken to her supporters or made a concession speech.