‘Not been this excited in a long time’: US expats ride the blue wave at Australian midterms watch parties

On the second floor of a Sydney pub, the mood shifts from nervous, browser-refreshing anxiety to champagne-popping within a matter of hours.

More than 100 US expats and election enthusiasts pack into the function space at the Keg and Brew in the inner-east suburb of Surry Hills to watch the midterm results roll in.

They’ve followed a sign reading “Democrats Abroad” guiding them upstairs on Wednesday lunch time when live reports began broadcasting on the pub television screens.

Early on, American voters, their Australian partners and British spectators said they were “cautiously optimistic”.

Within a couple of hours in, news of the Democrats’ historic win dramatically shifts the mood.

Katrena Henderson, from North Carolina, says she has “not been this excited about an election in a long time”.

Sitting with her Australian husband and adult son, the trio chronically refresh their phones for results and celebrate when her Senate seat flips to the Democrats.

“Nobody, I think, really believed that Democrats were going to do it. And they won decisively,” she says. “It just really points to the fact that Americans want something very different, because this administration is not working for us.

“I think what we didn’t have before today was a lot of hope … and at least now there is some hope.”

Associate Professor David Smith at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre, says the midterms are a “referendum on Trump”. He says the writing was on the wall as voters went to the polls with the president’s approval ratings at a “historically low” level.

“All year, I think Americans have been frustrated by Trump’s lack of focus on things that matter to most Americans,” he says.

“Whether that’s the war in Iran, which most Americans didn’t want and which have sent prices up in a pretty direct way, or whether it’s Trump’s constant beautification projects in Washington, D.C. … All of this is just evidence to a lot of Americans that he is focused on the wrong things and he’s focused on his own self-aggrandisement rather than the country.”

Cindy Herman-Jones moved to Australia from Texas almost 15 years ago and has never cast a vote while living abroad. She says she was compelled to mail in a ballot because of “the stakes of this election” were too high.

“Democracy itself is being attacked by the Trump regime,,” she says. “I just feel like they’ve done so many terrible things, and if he’s in power for another two years with no check on that, then it’s just going to continue to get worse and worse.”

In a list of the “many terrible things” Trump has done, Herman-Jones points to the increased “brutality” of ICE immigration enforcement and the US war in Iran – which she calls “the worst thing” he’s done.

Her vote towards Senator James Talarico saw him flip the Upper house seat, and “amazed” to see him win because “it’s such a hard job for a Democrat to win in Texas”.

Aliana Hensel is another first-time voter. The 18-year-old Californian has lived in Australia for about eight years with her American parents.

She says that while her parents “don’t generally vote” and have not voted while abroad, it was something she wanted to do because “something really, really needs to be done” about US leadership.

“I’ve been watching politics closely for the last few years. It’s something I feel really passionate about. I wasn’t old enough to vote in the presidential election, but I watched that, and it was quite the disappointment,” she says. “So I’ve been very focused on knowing that I can vote this time and wanting to make a bit of an impact.”

Just a couple of kilometres to the north of the Keg and Brew, a small group of election watchers gathered at the Cheers pub off Sydney’s George Street in the CBD over schnitzels and pints of Guinness.

The event was posted as a meetup for some Republican expat groups, but attracted more of a mixed bag of libertarians and independents interested in the drama of an American election.

“It’s interesting to me to see how the populations in America are responding to their situation,” Rahn Wood, 60, an Australian who splits his time between Sydney and Vietnam, said. When asked if he thought Australia and other nations looked towards America when it came to political decisions, Wood said Trump’s influence had a long reach.

“I think in a policy sense it does,” he said. “You see that with the green agenda and the support of the United Nations, both of those things are waning because the US – whether it’s Donald Trump or the Congress itself – isn’t very supportive of some of those agendas.

“I think that gives permission, structure for other people to say actually it’s not working for us either,” he went on. “This election helps to set that agenda from a policy point of view does really set the direction for western countries I think.”

Wood added he doesn’t think Australians are interested in anybody as mercurial as Trump, “but, by the same token there’s obviously a big chunk of people that are looking for change”

Others were not optimistic about the results handed down on Fox News, with one woman saying she was watching a growing blue wave with dread. Many had wandered off after lunch.

Professor Smith says while the election “could have significant ramifications as far as things like the Iran war go”, he doubts it will directly influence Australia or Albanese’s relationship to the US because “congress, at the moment, doesn’t have a very big role in foreign policy”.

Smith believes the most interesting is what happens to “Trumpism”.

“There are lots of politicians around the world who take their cues from Trump, including in Australia … If this is an election that really shows the limits of Trumpism in the United States, that could potentially make a few rightwing politicians worldwide rethink how much they want to be tied to Trump,” he says.