Christina Cilento held a private gathering to await the results of the ASG election Friday evening. Christina Cilento and Macs Vinson first announced their campaign in Annenberg Hall on March 30. Photo by Mia Zanzucchi / North by Northwestern 
"I absolutely don't regret the process at all," Syed said after announcing the results to her supporters. "If you believe in the cause, it's worth fighting for, especially when you have a team like ours." Photo by Mia Zanzucchi / North by Northwestern 
Joji Syed and Archie Baskaran's campaign supporters await the results of the ASG election in the McCormick Foundation Center. Photo by Virginia Nowakowski / North by Northwestern
Christina Cilento, SESP junior, and Macs Vinson, McCormick junior, will be Northwestern's new ASG president and executive vice president. Cilento and Vinson won the Friday election by a slim margin of 81 votes amidst an enormous voter turnout of over 50 percent of eligible undergraduate student voters.
This was a record turnout for the ASG election, with Cilento and Vinson finishing with 47.78 percent of the total 4,060 votes, ahead of Weinberg junior Joji Syed and Weinberg sophomore Archie Baskaran, who garnered 45.78 percent.
“I was out on Sheridan Road convincing randos to vote until 5 p.m. on the dot,” Cilento said.
Cilento’s campaign received the call about her win at about 5:30 p.m. in her apartment. “Once I got the call, I put it on speaker,” Cilento said. “As soon as the guy on the election commission said ‘Christina, I’m pleased to tell you…’ everyone started screaming and cheering and fell into a dog pile on the couch.”
Syed thanked her campaign group after hearing the results, acknowledging how hard everyone involved worked.
“I don’t want you to think of this as a loss because we got the message out,” she said. “Eighteen hundred students believed in us.”
Cilento attributed this year’s higher “No Confidence” vote - 261, up from 157 in last year’s election - to people who were not on board with Joji and Archie’s campaign but did not feel served by her and Vinson’s relatively controversial campaign focused heavily on issues pertaining to marginalized students.
In the hours leading up to the announcement, Cilento and Vinson’s campaign received criticism on the anonymous social media app Yik Yak. Cilento said she was glad not to be a Yik Yak user.
“People were telling me ‘Do not get a Yik Yak,’” she said. “But to me it reaffirmed the necessity of a campaign that is centralized around Northwestern’s marginalized community.”
Beyond Yik Yak, Cilento said tensions were high on both sides during the past couple of days.
“I regret that that happened, and I wish the campaign had been cleaner - we aren’t absolved from that,” she said. “I hope that there’s no hard feelings and that we’ll be able to work together if we need to.”
Regardless, Cilento and Vinson said they are excited to begin work with outgoing ASG President Noah Star and Executive Vice President Christina Kim.
“The whole process was incredibly overwhelming, but I’m glad we could pull through in the end,” Cilento said. “Especially because Macs and I never thought we’d run, to think that we won is an incredible realization.”
Editor's note: This post wast updated 7:10 p.m. on 4/8/16 to include a screenshot of election results.