CLARKSTON, Ga.—The sun was shining. Bruce Springsteen was strumming an acoustic guitar. Yet beneath the peaceful surface, the stadium packed with thousands of Democrats practically thrummed with anxiety.
“I’m honestly legit kind of terrified,” said Rebekah Williams, a 46-year-old Atlanta resident wearing a T-shirt that read “pro science, pro choice, pro wrestling.” The thought of trying to get through the next couple of weeks until the election had her on edge, not to mention what might happen afterward. To get through it, she was counting on “a lot of marijuana.”
With little more than a week to go in what could be the closest presidential election in American history, the nation is on edge. Partisans on both sides are paralyzed with suspense and apprehension as they look to white-knuckle it through the coming days. The candidates have amped up their appeals to an apocalyptic degree as the campaigns frantically work to turn out the vote. As Donald Trump and Kamala Harris both campaigned in this crucial swing state, voters broadly said this election feels different than those that came before—less a regular democratic exercise than a national panic attack, a twilight clash that could end democracy for good.
“I can remember elections where it felt like things would be OK regardless of the outcome,” Phillip Appiah, a 50-year-old contractor from Stone Mountain, said as he waited in line for a food truck on the stadium turf. “That feeling is absent this time.”
The angst is widespread across the political spectrum. In a Wall Street Journal poll released last week, 87% of voters said they believe America will suffer permanent damage if their candidate loses. Among Harris’s voters, 57% said they would feel “frightened” if Trump is elected, while 47% of Trump voters said they would feel frightened if Harris wins; smaller percentages expected to feel the milder reactions of anger or disappointment. At least half of voters said they think violence is likely if either Trump or Harris wins, and 53% say America’s divisions will keep growing regardless of the election’s outcome.
The same poll found Trump narrowly ahead within the margin of error—essentially a tie, similar to the results of numerous other recent national and swing-state polls. Even the polling guru Nate Silver , who rose to fame on predicting the outcome of elections, says he can’t predict which way this one will go (though his “ gut says Donald Trump”). It is anybody’s guess, as if the nation’s deep divisions had come to rest in a tense and unstable stalemate.
The political professionals don’t know what to think. In interviews, Democratic and Republican strategists oscillated between confidence and uncertainty as they considered the many factors that could shift the result of a race on a knife’s edge. Are the polls undercounting Trump’s voters as they have in the past —or overcounting them, as pollsters try to compensate? Could there be an undetected surge of new women voters animated by abortion—or of men drawn to Trump’s unconventional appeals? Would Democrats’ superior field organization put them over the top, or would Elon Musk ’s sudden investment do the same for the GOP? In a race this close, nearly anything—a weather event in Wisconsin, a late-breaking scandal—could be decisive.
Many Republicans are projecting confidence, but privately admit they can’t be sure. “It wouldn’t shock me if there’s some kind of sleeping giant out there,” said one Republican strategist—an under-the-radar electoral force that polls aren’t picking up. “It wouldn’t shock me if Trump ends up overperforming expectations in key voter groups. I also wouldn’t be shocked by Harris winning every swing state.”
“I don’t have emotions anymore. I can’t let politics make me emotional,” said Lauren Groh-Wargo, a Georgia Democratic strategist who runs the Fair Fight Action voter-mobilization group founded by former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams . “These races are so close, you just have to do what you can and focus on what you can control.”
A Democratic lobbyist in Washington put it more succinctly: “There are not enough gummies I can take to soothe the angst!”
Both candidates’ messages have amped up the fear. Harris this week called Trump a fascist and called a news conference to draw attention to his former chief of staff’s comments describing the former president as a would-be dictator. Trump has called Harris a communist, a fascist, and a threat to democracy who is “trying to destroy our country.” Musk, campaigning for Trump in Pennsylvania, is warning voters that the country is doomed if he loses and there will be no more elections.
If the warnings are aimed at motivating voters with urgency, they seem to be succeeding. More than 38 million people had voted early across the country as of Saturday, according to the University of Florida Election Lab . Georgia has seen record turnout every day since early voting began on Oct. 15. As a steady stream of voters lined up to cast ballots in the politically mixed Atlanta suburb of Marietta on Thursday, nearly all expressed trepidation about the days and weeks to come.
“I have no idea and I don’t think anybody else does, so yeah, it’s stressful,” said Scott Evans, a 64-year-old mortgage broker. “I feel like I live in a country I don’t want to be in anymore. There’s nobody good to vote for.” A Republican-leaning independent who wished Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had stayed in the race, Evans said the country is careening toward a crisis no matter who wins: “Honestly, I think we’re in trouble no matter what,” he said.
Maria Selva, a 52-year-old Realtor who voted for Harris, said she worried the U.S. was taking democracy for granted the way she had seen people do in Venezuela, where she spent part of her childhood. “Most people think, it’s OK, after this election you have a chance again in four years. I truly doubt if Trump wins that will happen,” she said. “It’s not just the presidency in question—the future of the country really is.” Her husband, Luis Blanco, said his plan to get through the “nerve-racking” next two weeks was “a lot of Scotch.”
The previous afternoon in Zebulon, Ga., a small town an hour south of Atlanta, thousands of Trump supporters thronged Christ Chapel to hear from their candidate, jamming traffic for miles and spilling out of the church and adjoining parking lot. The screen next to the stage flashed the words “NOV. 5: THE MOST IMPORTANT DAY IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY.” Here, too, many were in a dark and restless mood.
“We’ve already gone so far toward a totalitarian regime,” said Paul Schneider, a 67-year-old business owner from Sharpsburg who wore a shirt featuring Trump’s mug shot. “If he doesn’t get in, it’s going to be too late—they’re trying to take away democracy.” Schneider said he believed the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, but he had refrained from pressing his case “to avoid civil war.” This time, he wouldn’t hold back.
The Trump supporters’ anxiety and foreboding had a different quality than that of the Democrats. After all, for them, the hostile regime has already been installed; they are already living in the hellscape of Democratic governance. They were far more likely to express suspicion about the vote count, convinced the last election was rigged. But they were equally inclined to fret about unrest or worse around the corner.
“Civil war—people against the government,” said Madison Bates, a 21-year old student whose T-shirt showed Trump in front of the White House beneath big pink letters reading DADDY’S HOME. “I definitely think if Trump doesn’t get in, that’s what could happen. People are fed up. You see it every day.”
Patti Akin, a 69-year-old retiree from nearby Senoia, said she and her family had already voted, so now there was nothing to do but nervously wait. “It’s scary—you won’t know until they’re all counted, or even then whether it’s accurate. Look what happened in 2020,” she said. “I fear we’ll end up being a communist country instead of a country led by the Constitution.”
For many anxious voters, what comes next is simultaneously too awful to fully consider and can’t come soon enough. At Harris’s rally in Clarkston, the sun began to set as the crowd awaited former President Barack Obama , who would warn them, “Just because [Trump] acts goofy does not mean his presidency wouldn’t be dangerous.”
Nathan Mullin, a 50-year-old salesman from Stonecrest, said it was “extremely stressful” to see the polls so close day after day. “I can’t believe so many people would vote for that,” he said. Mullin shared the view that this year’s vote is more than a normal election.
“Usually elections are about, you know, who has the best tax policy, or who’s going to help the poor,” he said. “Now it’s about something completely different.”
Write to Molly Ball at molly.ball@wsj.com
