The St. Regis hotel put a big TV over its lobby-level piano for election night. | Tierney Plumb/Eater DC Inside the intense evening in the nation’s capital, with stops from Dupont to H Street The streets of D.C. were humming with protestors, watch-partygoers, and locals just trying to keep their minds off the pivotal presidential election last night. To capture a glimpse of a city on the brink of receiving historic election results, Eater DC editors Tierney Plumb and Emily Venezky did an ambitious crawl to over a dozen political hotspots holding Election Night deals across the city. We started together in Dupont Circle and walked down to the White House before splitting up to cover Chinatown, Mount Vernon Triangle, Penn Quarter, and H Street. Follow along on the chaotic journey below to see the groundbreaking night’s highs, lows, and many in-betweens. Tierney Plumb/Eater DC The Tuesday meal deal at the Admiral drew a big crowd. 5:30 p.m. Dupont’s Admiral is already completely booked out for the night with reservations and three watch parties (for PBS media staffers, Young Professionals in Foreign Affairs, and an anonymous one) taking up tables inside and out. Stragglers are fighting for seats at its wraparound bar in the center of the city. — Tierney Plumb and Emily Venezky 5:40 p.m. An Admiral hostess says she’s surprised by how many people are there, as she turns away a couple wearing Maryland “I voted” stickers. She’s not sure if it’s because of the huge TVs playing CNN inside and outside the restaurant, or the $17.99 burger, fries, and beer deal. She tells the constant flow of prospective diners to head to watch parties at Mission Group’s other bars, like Mission Dupont a few blocks away (which is almost completely empty by 6 p.m. Mission Dupont is mostly empty around 6 p.m., but bar staff said they did have a watch party booked upstairs. — TP + EV 6:05 p.m. Over at nearby Tokyo Pearl, Fox5 is playing on a muted, four-screen TV. Inside, the bar is almost completely empty, except for one diner. They typically have happy hour deals through 10 p.m. on weekdays, and the bar manager tells us that they will probably be busier in an hour. A bartender casually mentions that there have already been a lot of espresso martini ($9) orders for the outdoor tables that night. We decided to also fuel up with the creamy drinks, monogrammed with “Happy Tuesday,” and an order of sushi rolls ($7 each) before continuing the crawl. — TP + EV Emily Venezky The monogrammed espresso martini at Tokyo Pearl has a classic Kahlua base. 6:40 p.m. The Mayflower hotel’s Edgar Bar & Kitchen was filled with well-dressed business people watching CNN, but it wasn’t that busy, so the bar is also keeping normal hours tonight. — TP + EV 6:50 p.m. Morton’s the Steakhouse is showing only CNN on the TVs lining its upper patio. The screens are so bright we can see them from across Connecticut Avenue four floors down. The power spot is pretty empty, aside from a handful of people drinking whiskey and martinis at the indoor-outdoor bar. It smells like cigarettes everywhere, but it’s a temperate night for only two people to be on their patio. — TP + EV 7:00 p.m. Hotel staff at the St. Regis have moved a huge television above the lobby’s grand piano, which is playing CNN with the sound on, but some TVs in the bar are playing muted FOX coverage. The vibe is pretty chill, with only one or two empty tables and people walking out to stare at results coming in periodically. However, the doorman says they are staying open till they get results, which could be much later than the usual midnight closing. — TP + EV Emily Venezky A banner reads “Freedom for Palestine.” 7:08 p.m. In front of the White House, a large pro-Palestine protest is taking place outside of St. John’s, where many presidents have visited over the years and Trump held a contentious photo shoot during the George Floyd protests in 2020. The rally is surrounded by journalists and camera crews. During the unusually warm November night, a single vendor is successfully selling popsicles out of a cooler for $5 a pop. — TP + EV Tierney Plumb/Eater DC An ice cream cart set up shop near the protest. 7:10 p.m. A Christian group with a huge lit-up cross and pictures of Jesus Christ stand just past the gates in front of the White House. A man with a megaphone says, “We’re here for spiritual reasons, not political reasons,” as another pedestrian holding up an anti-Trump sign tries to join them. “This is the Jesus rally. You can only stand for him with us,” the man says. — TP + EV Tierney Plumb/Eater DC Hundreds of feet from the White House, Christian demonstrators get as close as they can to the fences. Emily Venezky A Brat Summer cocktail and bar snacks frame the collectable coasters. 7:20 p.m. International CBRE real estate executives and a Democratic U.S. Senator wearing an “I voted” sticker and Senate pin are seated at Off the Record’s bar. The bigwigs visiting from Hong Kong and the U.K. predict Trump is going to win; the senator heads out before 8 p.m. It’s pretty bustling in the historic hotel bar, and many orders of the caramelized onion-covered burger and fries ($32) whiz around the room. We try both the Blue Wave, a lychee boba-filled flute, and a spicy Midori-and-tequila-based Brat Summer cocktail, as Hay-Adams bar manager Rachel Sergi brings us its current lineup of cartoon coasters starring each presidential candidate and VP pick. We ask why so many bars seem empty or pretty tame on Election Night, and Sergi says it’s because there are “lots of house parties and not a lot of houses around downtown.” Meanwhile, it’s busy enough here that staff are putting up reserved signs on the bigger booths so parties of two don’t steal them. The bar definitely has plenty of intrigue, with Sergi casually dropping that Sting was here recently and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff frequently brings in staff. — TP + EV Tierney Plumb/Eater DC Off the Record’s back nook lined with faces of Supreme Court justices didn’t stay empty for long. 8 p.m. The pro-Palestine rally got about three times bigger while we were in Off The Record. Chanting protestors fill Black Lives Matter Plaza. — TP + EV Tierney Plumb/Eater DC Boards going up at K Street’s Joe and the Juice around 8 p.m. 8:10 p.m. Framed in patriotic flags out front, Park at 14th hosts an official election event for Ward 2 Councilwoman Brooke Pinto on the third floor and a D.C. Democrats event on the fourth floor. The doorman tells us they will stay open “till people stop spending money” tonight. The candidate for shadow senator, Anti Jain, is riding the elevator up to the fourth floor and says he’ll be speaking at 9 p.m. — TP + EV Tierney Plumb/Eater DC Election night cocktails at the Park. Tierney Plumb/Eater DC The crowded D.C. Democrats party inside Park at 14th. 8:20 p.m. The D.C. Democrats party is pumping, and it’s difficult to move through the massive crowd to the bar. It takes the two bartenders on duty about ten minutes to acknowledge us, but once they do, they are very positive and friendly, even as an impatient customer next to us asks if she can “push down the button” on the soda gun to speed up the bartender making her three gin and sodas. It’s an open bar, with plenty of special Harris- and election-themed drinks. The head bartender says she came up with each of them and used ChatGPT to give them clever names. We settle on the Democrarita with passionfruit puree (the most popular so far, we’re told) and the Ballot Bourbon, a whiskey and ginger beer concoction with lots of cranberry juice and lime. — TP + EV Tierney Plumb/Eater DC Councilmember Brooke Pinto and supporters donned all pink at the Park. 8:34 p.m. There is plenty of cheering as Delaware’s results comes in. Jain takes a seat to eat mashed potatoes and dinner rolls as he refreshes the election results over and over on his phone. Meanwhile, Pinto can be seen downstairs hugging her staff and waving up at supporters yelling down from the fourth floor. The Park at 14th is packed with Democrats from near and far. An original investor at Adams Morgan standby Reveler’s Hour reveals that he was just knocking on doors in Pennsylvania’s suburbs the day before, and a father-son duo from the Netherlands says they visit D.C. for every major election. — TP + EV Emily Venezky NBC News is haphazardly projected on the lounge area wall. 8:50 p.m. Cucina Morini is very busy, which is to be expected after the Italian restaurant extended its $7 martini deal to both the lounge and the main bar all night. In the lounge, a handful of spread-out 20-somethings hunch over laptops clicking between different news sites and Twitter, as everyone else furtively glances at the wall projection of NBC News between conversations. Conversely, almost no one is paying attention to election results in the restaurant’s larger bar. I end up circling the bars twice before being able to get an order in for the two dueling cocktails they are offering for Election Night: the pepper brine-filled Suspiria and the grapefruit-infused Primadonna, both of which are tequila-based. Emily Venezky The Suspiria cocktail easily won the the Election Night cocktail contest, according to chef Matt Adler. A bartender says that the bar staff was tracking the winner of the cocktail competition by placing little chips in different cups — but that was before things got too hectic. A spike in drink orders made it impossible to keep track, so now they will rely on the online sale system to see which drink won at the end of the night. They are also out of the best $6 snack at the bar, the homemade rosemary chips. — EV 9:22 p.m. Bar Chinois is showing CNN on two TVs. The network is slower to call states as results roll in, but diners don’t seem to care; people are talking, laughing, and barely checking in on the election. — EV 9:33 p.m. The bar is offering $12 martinis, either an election-themed pornstar martini or the bar’s classic MSG Martini, and $10 Red Bulls, spiked with a spirit of choice, all night long. Our waitress says the martinis have been more popular tonight. Orders of crab Rangoons come hot out of the kitchen. — EV Emily Venezky The savory MSG Martini and Au Pear Affair at Bar Chinois. 9:45 p.m. Harris has 81 electoral votes to Trump’s 154, according to CNN. The crowd has grown quieter at Bar Chinois. Everyone here is looking at the TVs more and more. — EV 10 p.m. The Mount Vernon Triangle Busboys and Poets has only three empty tables, with almost every spot occupied in the 320-seat space. It takes almost 10 minutes to clean up an empty table that we had to bargain with the hostess for. Three diners attempt to sit down at a table without asking, but our waitress catches them and promptly kicks them out of their stolen seats. Waiters here are wearing glow sticks and flag-covered mini top hats, definitely selling the heightened patriotic vibes. There are TVs broadcasting MSNBC in every room except the back dining area, which instead has a huge projection of the results. — EV Emily Venezky The back room of Busboys and Poets, usually used for speaking events, has MSNBC projected in the background. 10:10 p.m. Everyone claps at Busboys and Poets as Harris wins Colorado, the MSNBC volumes are so loud it’s hard to hear each other and many customers are just looking down at their phones silently. Are they checking other sources or texting loved ones? Who knows. — EV 10:21 p.m. Busboys and Poets diners loudly cheer as MSNBC announce that Angela Alsobrooks won Maryland, and boo as Ted Cruz wins Texas. We still haven’t gotten the water we ordered 20 minutes ago, even waiters are stopping to watch election results come in. Our waitress has been here since 3 p.m. She’s starting to lose her voice as she says the restaurant should have brought in more staff to help on Election Night. — EV 10:31 p.m. Casually dressed 20-somethings spill out onto 14th Street as the National Press Club’s watch party winds down on the 13th floor. Across the way in the Willard’s lobby, an UberEats driver holding an Al Volo Osteria bag is lost looking for his customer. At the historic hotel’s Round Robin bar, orders for the famed Mint Juleps, served in silver tin cups, are still going strong. The mood turns somber as a pair of 50-something-year-old friends from Arlington wearing Kamala T-shirts huddle around the sole TV. — TP 10:40 p.m. Things are getting louder at Busboys, people seem to tune out as MSNBC commentators talk about bomb threats in multiple states. — EV 10:50 p.m. There is scattered applause for Andrew Kim’s victory in New Jersey, making him the first Korean American senator. People at Busboys get quieter as it seems like Trump may win. — EV Tierney Plumb/Eater DC A Trump supporter sported a red MAGA hat and Gucci kicks at the Waldorf-Astoria. 10:45 p.m. At the Waldorf-Astoria, the iconic Pennsylvania Avenue hotel that flew the Trump International flag during his last Election Night win eight years ago, a tale of two parties is playing out. Two lobby-level drinkers in MAGA hats stand smirking as Pennsylvania’s results rolled in red and Kellyanne Conway commentary aired on Fox above. A solo diner eats his $30 personal pizza in silence at his tufted bar seat. One D.C. native who now lives in Florida tells me I just missed former D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty at the bar. The same Kamala supporters from Round Robin, who have migrated here, get into a heated verbal fight with the Floridian over female reproductive rights. — TP 11 p.m. Another guest in town from New Orleans shows off his Terminator-styled “I’ll Be Back” Trump sticker, complaining how last call at the hotel was much later back in 2016. Meanwhile, a 60-something-year-old local saying Bill Clinton was the “best president ever” offers his small party a hit of his joint outside. — TP 11:20 p.m. Rideshare apps are expensive right now, with a $40 10-minute ride to Dirty Water on H Street, which is hosting the D.C. chapter of Young Republicans’ watch party and may be the only bar publicly supporting Trump on Election Night. — EV 11:30 p.m. No surprises at Dirty Water: they are playing Fox News on huge televisions across the restaurant, bumping country music during muted advertisement breaks. The volume is so loud you can hear it from across the street. Smaller TVs behind the bar play CNN, ABC News, and MSNBC without volume. The cover for the open bar is $35, which means I’ll be drinking three vodka sodas to (somewhat) get my money’s worth. The cover is paid to a Young Republican member working the door, who says it’s been insane all night but a huge surge of people have been coming in since 10:30 p.m. A lot of American flag shirts and “Make America Great Again” hats fill the raucous crows, as one girl leaving with her friends stops to get a guy’s number and someone screams “it’s god’s country.” Upstairs there’s a more somber vibe, as guys in suits watch the election quietly. — EV Emily Venezky Sky News interviews someone at the indoor-outdoor bar. 11:40 p.m. There are many local news crews and smaller international news teams, like Sky News, interviewing people and swinging around the full bar. One cameraman says they are “not necessarily” there because it’s the only bar openly supporting Trump in the city. A guy with fresh scars on his face jokes that he got into a fight tonight. — EV 11:43 p.m. The Dirty Water crowd cheers louder than at any other bar I’ve visited tonight as North Carolina is called for Trump. — EV 11:51 p.m. Fox announcers project that Republicans will gain Senate control and Dirty Water bargoers go ballistic. — EV 12:15 a.m. A New Yorker and a guy from the Boston suburbs admit to each other that back in their liberal home states they’re both secretly conservative. The Massachusetts man says he was at Union Pub earlier but people started leaving when it sounded like Trump was winning, so he came to Dirty Water. The guy from New York says he “voted blue” up until 2024, when he was “red-pilled.” — EV Emily Venezky The two female bartenders jump on the bar when the Pennsylvania results come in. 12:23 a.m. All of the female bartenders are dancing on top of the bar to Rednex’s “Cotton Eye Joe” as Pennsylvania is called for Trump. People are still lining up to get into the bar, which was supposed to close at midnight. Meanwhile, groups of conservatives are huddled outside trying to order cars and rideshares. — EV 12:31 a.m. A young man in a suit is recounting the Georgia and Pennsylvania numbers on his phone at a bus stop a few feet away. “Mami, AP says Trump is gonna win,” he says excitedly. He bet money on Michigan and the Carolinas being hooked by Trump, so he’s pretty ecstatic. He’s laughing and screaming, as D.C. locals waiting for the bus (who weren’t in Dirty Water) stare. — EV 12:45 a.m. Trump wins Georgia. The bartenders jump onto the bar and start dancing to “Cotton Eye Joe” again. — EV