Donald
John Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States on
Tuesday in a stunning culmination of an explosive, populist and
polarizing campaign that took relentless aim at the institutions and
long-held ideals of American democracy.
The surprise outcome, defying late polls that showed Hillary Clinton
with a modest but persistent edge, threatened convulsions throughout
the country and the world, where skeptics had watched with alarm as Mr.
Trump’s unvarnished overtures to disillusioned voters took hold.
The
triumph for Mr. Trump, 70, a real estate developer-turned-reality
television star with no government experience, was a powerful rejection
of the establishment forces that had assembled against him, from the
world of business to government, and the consensus they had forged on
everything from trade to immigration.
The
results amounted to a repudiation, not only of Mrs. Clinton, but of
President Obama, whose legacy is suddenly imperiled. And it was a
decisive demonstration of power by a largely overlooked coalition of
mostly blue-collar white and working-class voters who felt that the
promise of the United States had slipped their grasp amid decades of
globalization and multiculturalism.
In
Mr. Trump, a thrice-married Manhattanite who lives in a marble-wrapped
three-story penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue, they found an
improbable champion.
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“The
forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer,”
Mr. Trump told supporters around 3 a.m. on Wednesday at a rally in New
York City, just after Mrs. Clinton called to concede.
In
a departure from a blistering campaign in which he repeatedly stoked
division, Mr. Trump sought to do something he had conspicuously avoided
as a candidate: Appeal for unity.
“Now
it’s time for America to bind the wounds of division,” he said. “It is
time for us to come together as one united people. It’s time.”
That, he added, “is so important to me.”
He
offered unusually warm words for Mrs. Clinton, who he has suggested
should be in jail, saying she was owed “a major debt of gratitude for
her service to our country.”
Bolstered
by Mr. Trump’s strong showing, Republicans retained control of the
Senate. Only one Republican-controlled seat, in Illinois, fell to
Democrats early in the evening. And Senator Richard Burr of North
Carolina, a Republican, easily won re-election in a race that had been
among the country’s most competitive. A handful of other Republican
incumbents facing difficult races were running better than expected.
Mr.
Trump’s win — stretching across the battleground states of Florida,
North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania — seemed likely to set off
financial jitters and immediate unease among international allies, many
of which were startled when Mr. Trump in his campaign cast doubt on the
necessity of America’s military commitments abroad and its allegiance to
international economic partnerships.
From
the moment he entered the campaign, with a shocking set of claims that
Mexican immigrants were rapists and criminals, Mr. Trump was widely
underestimated as a candidate, first by his opponents for the Republican
nomination and later by Mrs. Clinton, his Democratic rival. His rise
was largely missed by polling organizations and data analysts. And an
air of improbability trailed his campaign, to the detriment of those who
dismissed his angry message, his improvisational style and his appeal
to disillusioned voters.
He suggested remedies that raised questions of constitutionality, like a ban on Muslims entering the United States.
He
threatened opponents, promising lawsuits against news organizations
that covered him critically and women who accused him of sexual assault.
At times, he simply lied.
But
Mr. Trump’s unfiltered rallies and unshakable self-regard attracted a
zealous following, fusing unsubtle identity politics with an economic
populism that often defied party doctrine.
His
rallies — furious, entertaining, heavy on name-calling and nationalist
overtones — became the nexus of a political movement, with daily
promises of sweeping victory, in the election and otherwise, and an
insistence that the country’s political machinery was “rigged” against
Mr. Trump and those who admired him.
He
seemed to embody the success and grandeur that so many of his followers
felt was missing from their own lives — and from the country itself.
And he scoffed at the poll-driven word-parsing ways of modern politics,
calling them a waste of time and money. Instead, he relied on his gut.
At
his victory party at the New York Hilton Midtown, where a raucous crowd
indulged in a cash bar and wore hats bearing his ubiquitous campaign
slogan “Make America Great Again,” voters expressed gratification that
their voices had, at last, been heard.
“He
was talking to people who weren’t being spoken to,” said Joseph
Gravagna, 37, a marketing company owner from Rockland County, N.Y.
“That’s how I knew he was going to win.”
For
Mrs. Clinton, the defeat signaled an astonishing end to a political
dynasty that has colored Democratic politics for a generation. Eight
years after losing to President Obama in the Democratic primary — and 16
years after leaving the White House for the United States Senate, as
President Bill Clinton exited office — she had seemed positioned to
carry on two legacies: her husband’s and the president’s.
Her
shocking loss was a devastating turn for the sprawling world of Clinton
aides and strategists who believed they had built an electoral machine
that would swamp Mr. Trump’s ragtag band of loyal operatives and family
members, many of whom had no experience running a national campaign.
On
Tuesday night, stricken Clinton aides who believed that Mr. Trump had
no mathematical path to victory, anxiously paced the Jacob K. Javits
Convention Center as states in which they were confident of victory,
like Florida and North Carolina, either fell to Mr. Trump or seemed in
danger of tipping his way.
Mrs.
Clinton watched the grim results roll in from a suite at the nearby
Peninsula Hotel, surrounded by her family, friends and advisers who had
the day before celebrated her candidacy with a champagne toast on her
campaign plane.
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