Deja Vu and Despair: Election Night with Jon Stewart and ‘The Daily Show’

Heading into Jon Stewart’s Daily Show election special, Indecision 2024: Nothing We Can Do About It Now, no one precisely knew that Republican candidate and convicted felon Donald Trump would decisively win the presidential election by dawn. Still, anxiety loomed in the air. Around 10 p.m., guests filed into the Daily Show’s studio on 11th Avenue for the live event. Even then, projections indicated that there would be no miraculous blue wave, that the tide was turning against Kamala Harris, and that history was perilously close to repeating itself.

Once inside the studio, the audience sat mostly in silence, doomscrolling on their phones, waiting for Stewart and his Daily Show correspondents to inject some levity, laughs, and most importantly, hope, into the room. As the margins grew wider and the red mirage began to crystalize into a red wave, some audience members were able to retain their sense of nauseous optimism. “[I’m] nervous as can be,” said Brandy, an assistant public defender born in West Virginia who now lives and votes in Houston, Texas. She was at the taping with her husband, Ryan, a patent lawyer. Both of them voted for Harris; they had just found out Texas was projected to go to Donald Trump. “We knew Texas would go right, but we live in Houston, and Harris County goes blue,” she said, proudly.

And just like that, the crowd was instructed by a stage manager to turn our phones off for the duration of the program, untethering the anxious audience from Steve Kornacki’s grey khakis and his excruciating election updates for the next 90 minutes. Forcibly offline, we sat and politely chuckled at the warm-up comic who did his best to lift the mood of an increasingly tense studio audience. After what felt like a diminutive eternity, Stewart finally emerged, smiling and enthusiastic. A palpable sense of relief washed over the audience.

“I just want to come out and say hello, and thank y’all so much,” said Stewart to the studio audience. “I haven’t been up this late in quite some time.” While he seemed to be in good spirits, even Stewart couldn’t escape the sense of foreboding in the air.

“We’re going to enjoy ourselves, maybe for the last time,” he quipped. “I don’t know. We’re going to have some fun.”

In the minutes before the show began, Stewart shared his own voting experience with the crowd. “I voted on Sunday in my town”—Colts Neck, New Jersey. “I live in a pretty red town. So I went to vote, and was I’m not going to say [I was] glared at,’ but there was a lot of, like, I’m going to cancel you out, motherfucker.” While that could have been perceived as yet another harbinger of doom, the audience, elated to be in Stewart’s presence, laughed along. “I brought a lot of Dunkin Munchkins, so the election officials were delighted,” he added. “If you’ve ever seen old people on a sugar high, it is—” Before he could finish his thought, producers instructed Stewart that it was go time.