At Carter headquarters in Boston last night the end came short and sweet. "I don't believe it." Dante Baracci of Franklin moaned, as the NBC map began flashing Reagan blue and declared the Republican presidential candidate the winner at 8:15 p.m.

But in contrast to the wake-like atmosphere at the Park Plaza--where reporters and hotel staff outnumbered the smattering of Carter supporters--a heady mixture of cigar smoke and jubilation marked the scene in the jam-packed Commonwealth Room of the Sheraton Boston.

"This is the best thing to happen to America since the '69 Mets," exulted Rick Trowbridge, a Tufts University senior who joined more than 350 local Reaganites in cheering the Republican's landslide victory.

Andersonites

Downstairs in the Republic Ballroom, about 150 workers for independent candidate Rep. John B. Anderson (R-Ill.) sat cross-legged, yelling, "Spoiler!" when Carter appeared on the large screen projection television to make his concession speech.

A very weary David S. Solomon '81, Anderson's Massachusetts student coordinator, appeared relieved that the campaign was finally over. "I'm feeling better and better," he said, pointing to the latest in a series of gin-and-tonics.

Though their candidate finished third and was struggling to reach the five-per-cent he needed for federal matching funds, Anderson's Boston supporters seemed relaxed and considerably more enthusiastic than the skeleton crew at Carter's headquarters.

At the same cavernous Park Plaza ballroom where Sen. Edward M. Kennedy '54 (D-Mass.) had celebrated his primary victory exactly eight months earlier, a projection of a Carter victory brought little notice and only a few handclaps from the sparse gathering.

But Lisa A. Rotenberg '81, Carter's state campus coordinator, found some solace in that result despite his disastrous showings in virtually every other state. "I'm fabulously happy about Massachusetts," she said, adding quickly, "but obviously, the national trends aren't going well."

But everything went well for Reagan, whose state supporters shrugged off the state defeat and blamed it at least in part to a lack of funds from the national office. Jack Abramoff, a Brandeis senior and head of Massachusetts College Republicans, said he wasn't surprised at the scale of the Reagan victory but noted, "most Republican polls showed he was killing Carter everywhere."

Abramoff said his only worry was the possibility Carter might have something up his sleeve regarding the hostages in Iran. "Thank God he didn't, though," he said