At midnight this Tuesday, Asher Labovich ’26 received a standing ovation from a crowd of hundreds gathered in Salomon Center’s auditorium. He had spent the night providing real-time political analysis to students as presidential election results poured in nationwide.
“Let’s go, Asher!” whooped a voice from the crowd.
The event was the culmination of hundreds of hours of work for many — including Labovich, who said he had compiled “100 pages worth of notes (and) read over 500 pages of news sites and election data” in preparation.
Hosted by Labovich and directed by Ariel Shifrin ’27, the election night event was coordinated and sponsored by the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs and a number of student organizations, including Brown Political Review, Brown Political Union and Brown Votes.
24cast.org, an election prediction model affiliated with BPR, was at the forefront of the event. Displayed on the auditorium’s screen, the interactive website flashed live election updates all night long.
Founded by Labovich, 24cast.org was born out of BPR’s model forecasting the 2022 senate midterm elections.
Labovich, Shifrin and a team of nearly 50 students have spent the past two years expanding the new model. According to Labovich, 24cast.org is unique because of its use of machine learning — technology that he says has “never been seen before in the political sphere.”
Shifrin explained that election prediction models are typically built by full-time staff at large corporations over a long period of time. “We didn’t have that,” he said.
24cast.org’s final estimate was that Harris would have a 70% chance of winning.
The election-day event took over the entirety of Salomon: 24cast.org’s live broadcast was displayed in the auditorium, stress-reducing activities were held in the basement and states were called in a decision room on the second floor.
To gain entrance into the event, students lined up outside Salomon well into the night. In the lobby, volunteers handed out pizza, ice cream and other refreshments as polls in swing states closed and stress levels began to rise.
Despite the event’s smooth appearance and prompt start, Labovich and Shifrin revealed that there was some turbulence behind the scenes. The decision desk’s dashboard was broken for the first 20 minutes, leaving the coding team “scrambling” to fix it, Shifrin said.
Labovich also only began commenting on exit poll data about two hours into the event. “That was because we had literally just finished building the exit poll explorer,” he said.
Around 8 p.m., Sarah Frank ’25 described the atmosphere as “nervously optimistic,” adding that a “positive blue energy” permeated the room.
Throughout the night, the crowd buzzed with nervous excitement, erupting whenever the fateful “PROJECTION” slide swept across the screen. Collective booing filled the auditorium when 24cast.org called states for Trump, while cheers and enthusiastic applause rang twice as loud when Harris’s face flashed across the screen.
A number of student, faculty and local speakers addressed the crowd throughout the five-hour event. R.I. House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi (D-Warwick) encouraged students to get involved with the state house and spoke on the importance of affordable housing. Providence Mayor Brett Smiley described his experiences darting across polling stations and chatting with first-time voters, sharing that he still gets “butterflies” on election night.
Three Brown professors — Marques Zarate and Paul Testa, assistant professors of political science, and Anthony Levitas, a senior fellow in international and public affairs — shared their perspectives on Latinx voting, the accuracy of polling and the future of immigration, respectively.
Two student panels also punctuated the night, but they were frequently interrupted by Labovich as new races were called.
Downstairs, BWell’s Wellness Peer Education team led a collaborative event with BPR involving an immersive sound bath, journaling activities and an array of squishies and fidget toys for students to keep.
Kieran Flores ’27, a wellness peer education coordinator, described the room as “a little less tense” than the other rooms in Salomon.
During the event, there was also a meditation room and several viewing centers where students tuned into CNN, ABC and other broadcast channels.
“It’s been really lively and exciting to see how many people are involved,” Anna Duong ’25 said, adding that the live projections cultivated a spirit of “camaraderie” in the room.
Frank also appreciated Labovich’s analysis following each call. She noted that his detailed dissection of information was “really helpful” and easy to understand for those less fluent in political language.
“It feels like I’m sitting in Salomon to witness history, not disaster,” Frank added.
Behind the scenes, a team of eight 24cast.org members spent the night analyzing polling data in the decision room on the second floor.
Tiziano Pardo ’28, a member of the decision desk, said that each team member was assigned two swing states to focus on, comparing data from previous elections with 2024 results from the Associated Press.
Once a team member felt confident enough to call their state, the verdict was relayed to decision-desk lead Logan Rabe ’26, who approved it for display on the projection screen.
In the decision room, half-eaten Chipotle bowls lay scattered around the room, and every open screen displayed a dense spreadsheet of data. It was the quietest room in the entirety of Salomon — even the BWell station produced more chatter.
“I think that our team did a phenomenal job preparing for this event, both here on the data side, getting us prepared for the decision, as well as up front with the programming,” Pardo said.
As the night crept on and projections seemed to increasingly favor Trump, the booing grew more determined. Students whispered their anxieties to one another, and laptops dotted around the auditorium displayed CNN broadcasts and the New York Times’s live coverage.
Alongside Labovich, 24cast.org members continued to analyze key counties that could make or break the election in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — three states that became vital for a Harris victory as it became progressively clear that other contentious states like Iowa, North Carolina and Georgia were going to Trump.
Students filtered in and out of the auditorium all night, but even by 11 p.m., the room remained nearly at capacity.
“I’d rather be Trump right now,” Labovich repeated to the crowd as the clock ticked toward midnight.
The event was scheduled to run until 3 a.m., but Shifrin said that most students had left by 1 a.m.
Labovich and Shifrin said they were proud of how the event had gone and expressed gratitude for the team of students behind them.
“I’m so glad the campus was able to see the product of that work,” Shifrin said. “I did not expect a packed house. I did not expect a line out the door.”
24cast.org was officially dissolved after the event, according to Labovich. Shifrin said their goal was to put on an “incredible event,” and that now that this had been achieved, the organization had fulfilled its purpose.
“I need to take a break,” Labovich added.
“This was a special team to work with,” Shifrin said. “I don’t know that I’ll have many projects in my life that will feel like this.”
Maya Nelson is a senior staff writer covering undergraduate student life. She’s interested in studying either English or Literary Arts and loves to read sci-fi and fantasy in her free time. She also enjoys playing guitar, crocheting and spending an unreasonable amount of time on NYT Spelling Bee.
