The election results came a lot faster than most people expected. On Tuesday it was just voting and waiting and anxiety and an inner sense that anything was possible and then by Wednesday morninghiuslots, one answer: Donald Trump had shifted the country toward him in a decisive win.

Times Opinion sent a group of photographers — including two students — to Kamala Harris’s watch party at Howard University in Washington and Mr. Trump’s watch party in West Palm Beach, Fla., to document reactions to the election.

At the election night parties, the photographers captured the true supporters, people experiencing the surge of promise in the results and then the diverging paths. First, in Florida, the exultation of each success as it rolls in, feelings of vindication and validation of Mr. Trump’s decisive win and an almost disbelief at it. In Washington, there is a hopeful crowd, then in later photos, the slow and devastating realization that their earlier excitement and vision of the future has faded.

Before and after the parties, in other parts of the country, photographers also captured people not knowing what the outcome would be or knowing it and grasping it in celebration or still recalling the remnants of their Monday excitement that had become, by Wednesday, for Harris supporters, disorienting disappointment.

The sheer size and diversity of the country — at least 69 million people voting for one candidate and at least 73 million voting for the other, joined together by American flags — can be hard to visualize. All of us have been living through the Trump era, which will be another four years.

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