For a political science major, the thrill of staying up Tuesday night to find out the results of the election is like that moment registration opens for scheduling spring courses.
Ryan Fucci, 22, senior political science major, stayed up until 3 a.m. Wednesday morning to find out every outcome from the election.
“It was a big night for Republicans, gaining control of the senate and win a bunch of governorships,” Fucci said. “The only disappointment of course was Pennsylvania going to Tom Wolf, the democrat.”
Democrat nominee Tom Wolf was elected governor of Pennsylvania with 54.89 percent of the votes, beating Republican incumbent candidate Tom Corbett with 45.11 percent of the votes.
“I am so grateful to the voters of Pennsylvania for giving me this chance to serve as governor of Pennsylvania… I know that there’s a heavy, fearsome responsibility on me. This is not just the honor of getting votes, it’s about the necessity of doing things for Pennsylvania,” Wolf said in his acceptance speech.
Fucci attributed the Corbett’s loss to personal feelings of the public against the candidate. “Just because of ‘supposed’ education cuts that he did that affected a lot of people and people got upset about that,” Fucci said. “The only thing that went Democrat in our state was governor because people got upset.”
Senior political science major, Liza Gordon, 21, wasn’t surprised by the results of the election.
“I was really excited about Tom Wolf winning, that was a good thing,” Gordon said.“I think it means good things. I’m pretty optimistic about it. It’s still going to be hard to get things done.”
She was disappointed with voter turnout.
“Not only in Pennsylvania, but there’s been record lows in voter turnout across the country,” she said. “I’m not sure why. Maybe because Congress has shown historically that it hasn’t been getting stuff done recently, there’s been a lot of turmoil.”
Even after the win, Gordon and Fucci felt things could be tough now for Wolf. Gordon said that the first thing that needs to happen after the win is for the public to tame their expectations.
“I think that’s always a problem: when the person you want wins, you assume that they’re going to get everything done that you want to get done so fast. I think people need to realize that even though Tom Wolf won and that’s amazing and hopefully student education, student loans, and things like that will get better, but he still has a lot of things to get through, obstacles to overcome to get those things done,” she said. “People need to give people time to get things done.”
Fucci added that a big obstacle for Wolf could be the Republican House and Senate.
“He definitely has the people on his side at this point, but it’ll be tough to get the Republican House and the Senate in the state to agree with him. Like the president and like the country as a whole they’ll have to compromise to get stuff done,” Fucci said.
He feels that this election could mean big things in terms of the 2016 election.
“Either Obama could start agreeing with the House and the Senate because they would be able to pass bills… so he could sign those or push them back. In that case people would see ‘Oh, Republican Congress is working, Democratic President is not. The option is they would all work together and actually get stuff done,” Fucci said. “It could have big implications for the 2016 presidential race. [Republicans] have the Senate. They have the House. So, look forward to 2016 and see what happens there. We always look ahead.”
