Donald Trump will enter the White House as the 45th US president after winning the bellwether states of North Carolina, Ohio and Florida.
Mr Trump defied pollster odds to take key battlegrounds, his valuable win in Florida meant that the US election was on a knife-edge for much of the night, leading to nervousness in the international markets and a fall in the value of the dollar.
Mrs Clinton managed to win the battlegrounds of Nevada, Virginia and Colorado, but needed to take Michigan, Iowa and Pennsylvania to revive her chances.
The dollar tumbled and most Asian markets were down as Mr Trump made strong progress – while the Mexican peso also slipped. The Dow futures market plunged more than 800 points while the Standard and Poors 500 futures market fell more than 5 per cent before midnight.
Florida and Ohio were huge prizes for Mr Trump’s campaign, making Hillary Clinton’s hopes of becoming the first female president in US history almost impossible. A Trump win in Pennsylvania proved the final death knoll in her campaign.
An early Trump win in Ohio – the state that has been won by every winning candidate in every presidential election since 1964 – led a senior aide at the Republican’s New York “victory party” to declare an early win for Trump .
The Republican surpassed expectations and confounded pollsters in Florida, where Hillary Clinton had been expected to win following a surge in the Hispanic vote.
Layne Bangerter, director of the Trump for President campaign in Idaho, told the Press Association: “I’m saying it’s over. The voice of the people has risen up.”
In a message which appeared to betray the nervousness in the Clinton camp, the Democratic nominee thanked her supporters “whatever happens tonight” as one of the most bitterly-contested elections in US history was this morning on a knife-edge. Earlier in the day the Trump campaign had launched a lawsuit alleging voter fraud in Nevada. There were also technical issues in some North Carolina precincts meaning paper ballots were being used.
Reaction to Trump win
As the likelihood of a Trump victory emerged, the end of the world began trending on Google, while searches for emigrating spiked.
Canada’s official immigration website crashed in the wake of an upward trend for Mr Trump.
David Axelrod, who was Barack Obama’s chief election strategist, described the election as “a primal scream on behalf of the US electorate against the status quo”.
Sarah Palin compared the Trump vote to the Brexit vote: “We’ve just done what y’all have done, sweeping our own porches before we sweep other people’s”.
Meanwhile Ukip leader Nigel Farage said he was delighted, saying that Mr Trump would be a key ally to Britain in the wake of the EU referendum.
However, Mr Trump faces fractures within his party, given the numerous Republicans who either tepidly supported his nomination or never backed him at all. In his victory speech, he urged Americans to “come together as one united people”. Despite urging his supporters on as they chanted “lock her up” during his campaign, Mr Trump said the nation owed his Democrat rival “a major debt of gratitude” for her years of public service.
Trump has pledged to usher in sweeping changes to U.S. foreign policy, including building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and suspending immigration from countries with terrorism ties. He’s also praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and spoken of building a better relationship with Moscow, worrying some in his own party who fear he’ll go easy on Putin’s provocations. Mr Putin was among the first world leaders to congratulate him early on Wednesday morning.
Obama, who campaigned vigorously for Clinton throughout the fall and hoped his own rising popularity would lift her candidacy, was silent on Trump’s victory, but he is expected to invite him to the White House this week. It will be a potentially awkward meeting with the man who pushed false rumors that the president might have been born outside the United States.
At Hillary Clinton’s election night event, supporters were in anguish. “You guys had Brexit but we have Donald Trump, that’s so much worse,” said Matthew Goreman, a million dollar donor to the Clinton campaign. “I am literally worried about nuclear Armageddon.”
“To watch your country fall apart before your eyes. To have your last bastion of male patriarchy win out. He’s saying it’s OK to hurt people, to use racist slurs.”
House and Senate wins for Republicans
Mr Trump claims his place as America’s 45th president with Congress fully under Republican control and GOP Senate candidates fended off Democratic challengers in key states, including North Carolina, Indiana and Wisconsin.
Republicans retained their lock on the House of Representatives for two more years early Wednesday as GOP candidates triumphed in a checkerboard of districts in Florida, Virginia and Colorado that Democrats had hoped Donald Trump’s divisive comments about women and Hispanics would make their own.
Democrats who had envisioned potentially big gains in suburban and ethnically diverse districts instead were on track for disappointingly modest pickups. Republican contenders were buoyed by Trump’s startlingly strong White House bid against Democrat Hillary Clinton and appeal to white working-class voters.
By Wednesday morning, Republicans had at least 232 seats – guaranteeing control – and just five of their incumbents had lost. The GOP retained seats in Minnesota, New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Wisconsin that Democrats sought to grab, and Republicans prepared to build on their current six-year run of House control.
Senate control means Trump will have great leeway in appointing Supreme Court justices, which could mean a shift to the right that would last for decades.
Source: telegraph.co.uk