Trump wins
The president-elect, however, was most unlike the nominee. His government, he pledged, will serve all Americans “from all races, religions, backgrounds, and beliefs, who want and expect our government to serve the people”.
Reading from a teleprompter, which he seemed to have embraced completely in the final stages of the campaign, Trump also seemed mindful of the role of the US in the world, and of the need to address concerns caused by his unorthodox views.
“I want to tell the world community that while we will always put America’s interests first, we will deal fairly with everyone, with everyone, all people and all other nations,” Trump said. “We will seek common ground, not hostility; partnership, not conflict.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to Trump to convey his best wishes and hoped the two nations would continue to build on the “bedrock of strong Indo-US ties”.
On the campaign trail, Trump had railed against China, and had said Japan and South Korea were free to go nuclear, and that the US would not come to Europe’s rescue.
It will take more than words to calm nerves both abroad and at home. He may have made a start though, speaking well of Clinton, with whom he was barely on talking terms during the campaign, saying the country should thank her for her service.
The Democratic nominee caused a minor stir earlier when her campaign chair John Podesta announced she would not be making a speech after it became clear Trump was going to win, and she would be expected to deliver the customary concession speech.
Votes are still being counted, Podesta told supporters on Tuesday night, adding Clinton would speak the next morning. As pundits and TV talking heads went into an early morning funk, Clinton called Trump, conceded the race and congratulated him.
As the counting of votes continued late into Tuesday night, Trump had wrapped up all the critical battleground states of Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, leaving Clinton without a plausible path to victory.
Of the battleground states, Clinton took only Virginia and Colorado in a staggering reversal of opinion polls — surveys and forecasts that had the Democrat leading in most of the swing states, and nationally, for most of the year.
Clinton led along forecast lines in the early results, but those trends quickly turned as Trump caught up and surged past her within a few hours. Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania all followed the same pattern, as if scripted.
Soon Trump was leading Clinton in the count of electoral college votes, which technically determine the race and not the popular vote. Forecasters such as FiveThirtyEight and The New York Times’s The UpShot suddenly had him as the favourite.
States the Clinton campaign had considered to be its firewall – such as Michigan and Wisconsin, two of the rust belt states, so called because of their shuttered and rusting factories – saw Trump build up a sizable lead.
In the end, Clinton was left with nothing else to lose but the election, and failed once again to shatter a glass ceiling she had left with 18 million cracks in 2008, the number of votes she polled in the Democratic primaries that she lost to Barack Obama.