"This is incredible. I have no words," said Neli Dimitrova.
Dimitrova's a member of the Western Wake Republican Club and has been on the front lines in North Carolina working to get former President Donald Trump back in the White House.
"These last four years, everybody was struggling and continued to struggle," she said Wednesday.
Dimitrova immigrated from Bulgaria in 2003 and gained her American citizenship in 2017 during the first Trump presidency, calling the way the Republican party has embraced her "incredible."
She called Tuesday's landslide victory a wake-up call.
"I think that finally people who had the last four years with the Democrats and didn't see any change, finally they woke up," she said.
Across the political spectrum Wednesday, thousands of Harris volunteers were processing a difficult and resounding defeat.
"The first reaction is disappointment," said Mona Singh, a member of the Wake Dems and volunteer for the Harris campaign. "And I think I cried for five minutes. But then it's like, 'OK, what do we learn from this?'"
Singh helped coordinate large canvassing turnout in the days leading up to the election. She said there clearly were areas the campaign fell short in -- and voters they were unsuccessful in connecting with -- but she's confident that won't happen again.
She and other local Democrats are vowing to regroup and use lessons from this election to fuel new efforts in 2026.
"You don't take great steps if you don't fall and learn from your failures, right? So there were obviously things we could have done better. There's things that we need to pay more attention to next time," Singh said.