Residents hopeful Trump's return will boost economy

Nov. 6—Melody Dixon, a Newfane resident, was surprised that the presidential election was called so shortly after Election Day.

"Wow, no waiting a week," she said Wednesday morning.

Dixon said she voted for Trump because she believed that if he was in the White House prices would decrease.

"Gas prices are already coming down this week," she noted.

Lockport resident Cookie Butcher also voted for Trump, saying that the past four years haven't been great and she, too, believes that the economy will improve with Trump in office.

"Because he's proven it in the past," Butcher explained. "I voted on policies and principles and I am hopeful of the times ahead."

On the other hand, Julie Obermiller, a wheelchair-bound Barker native, was devastated by the results.

"It was like a knife to my heart ... it was not the 272 delegates, it was that he had also won the popular vote. I had always consoled myself that there was more of us than there was of them," she lamented.

Obermiller said that she doesn't believe prices will go down — she noted that tariffs will raise prices for "half of Walmart" — but she does believe that it's time, "to put on our big kid pants."

"I believe in free and fair elections in our country," she said. "I believe the system is still there and there won't be any storming of the capital."

Nick Berning of Barker said he didn't vote but had been getting into Trump because he felt Harris was just adapting to the polls.

"There's no surprises with him," he said. "You know who you're dealing with."

On the other side of the spectrum, Bob Ray, who had spent Tuesday in front of the Kenan Center with a sign supporting Michelle Roman, a former Lockport mayor, for the New York State Assembly race against Paul Bologna. He said the presidential election results left him "speechless."

"I'm shocked and speechless, but I've got to accept it," he said.

Steven Allore of Lockport simply said, "I'm disappointed."

"I'm not mad," he continued "I'm just disappointed. Hopefully, we don't go full totalitarianism. Hopefully, the economy doesn't get tanked and hopefully sometime soon, we learn to love each other again and become united, not hateful and divided."

According to Jennifer Sandonato, Republican commissioner of the Niagara County Board of Elections, a little more than 100,000 county residents voted in this election, a voter turnout of roughly 65%. In 2020, the last presidential election, 105,000 voters participated and in 2016, 93,000 voters voted, she said.

Early voting numbers broke records this year in Niagara County with more than 30,000 cast before the election but Sandonato said that she doesn't believe early voting brought any new voters to the polls. Instead, she believes that many current voters simply spread out their votes over a number of days instead of all arriving at the polls all at once on election day.

"It's not that it drew many more people," she said, "it was just a different way to vote for people to utilize."