Trump accepts victory, says he wishes to ‘unify our great country’

Republican Donald Trump has been elected the 45th president of the United States, pulling off the biggest upset in modern American politics with a shock defeat of Democrat Hillary Clinton who had led in the polls.

Mrs Clinton called Mr Trump to concede defeat after 2.30am on Wednesday as a succession of state victories left the Republican nominee on the verge of winning enough votes to take the White House.

The Republican Party rounded off a stunning election for the party by keeping control of the US Senate and the House of Representatives, creating a single-party government and handing Mr Trump a legislative advantage in Congress that will allow him to push through his agenda.

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Campaign chair for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, John Podesta, speaks to her supporters during election night at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

“I love this country,” Trump said in a victory speech in New York.

“For those who have chosen not to support me in the past, of which there were a few people, I’m reaching out to you for your guidance and your help so that we can work together and unify our great country.”

The New York property developer and television celebrity confounded critics and pollsters to become the first non-politician to win the White House since General Dwight D Eisenhower was elected in 1952.

Mr Trump, at 70, becomes the oldest president ever elected and his wife Melania, the Slovenian-born former model, the first foreign-born first lady.

The businessman secured victory by winning over working-class white voters at levels not seen since Republican Ronald Reagan’s landslide victories of the 1980s.

On a drama-filled night as state after state swung to the Republican, Mrs Clinton’s chances of winning the White House on her second attempt ebbed away as Mr Trump’s surged in the main battleground states.

The Republican, in his first run for national office, won the critical swing states of Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Iowa, putting him within reach of the presidency in the early hours of Wednesday.

The scale of Mr Trump’s electoral surge became apparent as he challenged Mrs Clinton in the traditional blue states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Maine.

It became clear that Mrs Clinton could not make up the gap with Mr Trump in states that she was expected to win.

At 1.36am (6.36am Irish time), the Associated Press declared Mr Trump the winner in Pennsylvania, a state last won by a Republican since 1988, giving him 20 electoral votes and inching him closer to the 270 electoral college vote finish line that would declare him the winner.

At around 3am, Mr Trump was pronounced the winner in Wisconsin giving him the required 270 electoral votes to be declared the next president.

The state last voted for a Republican in 1984, reflecting the magnitude of the reality-TV star’s remarkable achievement.

Key swing states

As key swing states fell into the red column, chants and delirious cheers rose from the crowd at Trump’s election night party in the Hilton hotel in midtown Manhattan, not far from his Trump Tower headquarters.

“God bless America,” said Susan Esson, a Trump supporter from Palm Beach in Florida who was cheering on every result. “This is what it’s all about, isn’t it?”

When the Fox News TV network called the midwestern Rust Belt state of Wisconsin, previously considered a safe Democratic state, for Mr Trump just after 11.30pm, a chant of “USA! USA!” rose from the crowd. “Lock her up,” went another chant, referring to Mrs Clinton.

Fifteen Manhattan blocks away, at Mrs Clinton’s election night party at a West Side convention centre, shock rippled through the crowd as the mood darkened with every state victory declared for Mr Trump.

Some cried openly and other left as the Democratic nominee’s path to the White House was closed off.

“F**king devastated, I am just devastated,” said Zander Shepherd (24) from New York, struggling to understand the support Mr Trump won across the country.

“Clearly there were more people out there who were aligned to his frankly disgusting views and beliefs for what he wants this country to represent and what he wants to do with our nation,” he said.

“There were enough people out there who felt that what he was promising was the change they wanted to see. That to me is sad. I don’t think it’s a step in the right direction.”

Penelope Cox (55), also from New York, described herself as “gob-smacked” at Mr Trump’s victory.

“It is very unexpected and really sickening,” she said.

Refusing to delve into what went wrong for Mrs Clinton or right for Mr Trump, she said: “I don’t care about him or her right now. I just care about our country and it’s wrong for our country.”

Investors

Mr Trump’s victory spooked investors as his anti-trade policies and promises to introduce tariffs on foreign imports threaten to disrupt global commerce and unsettle long-establishment trading ties.

Trading in US stock futures dropped around 4 per cent in pre-market trading with the main futures indices, the S&P, Nasdaq and the Dow Jones all dropped.

The website of a Canadian immigration website crashed apparently from the volume of interest from people looking to plan an exit strategy to leave the United States to avoid a Trump presidency.

In a remarkable campaign that upended political convention and ripped up the traditional election playbook, Mr Trump won the support of working-class white voters with his simple slogan, “Make America Great Again.”

It awakened a new political force, energising a middle-class angry at economic decline and the political establishment with a promise to restore jobs and prosperity and put American interests first.

In a seismic shift in modern American politics, the outsider who saw off establishment Republicans and career politicians to win the party’s nomination in July extended his insurgency to a national election victory.

Controversial campaign

Mr Trump ran one of the most controversial campaigns ever sparking outrage by calling Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists, promising to build “a beautiful wall” along the Mexican border to keep illegal migrants out and temporarily ban Muslim immigrants in response to terror attacks in Europe.

Even a leaked 2005 tape recording of Mr Trump boasting about being able to “do anything” to women including grabbing them by the genitals because he was “a star” and allegations of sexual misconduct by 11 women who came forward late in his presidential campaign did not derail his populist campaign.

The candidate, who once declared his love for the “poorly educated,” saw that love repaid “big league” - one of the businessman’s favourite superlative that can now be applied to the surprise election victory.

Exit polls showed that seven in 10 non-college educated white men and six in 10 non-college-educated white women backed Mr Trump and his belief that the system was “rigged” against everyday Americans.

His nationalistic, xenophobic campaign stirred the emotions of non-college educated whites, beating Mrs Clinton among these voters by a whopping 39 points.

The Republican even outperformed the party's 2012 nominee Mitt Romney among Hispanics, losing the by 36 points against Mrs Clinton, an improvement on Mr Romney's 44-point loss to Mr Obama.

In the final weeks of the campaign, Mr Trump escalated his aggressive tone, threatening during the second debate that if he was elected president he would ask his attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Mrs Clinton’s use of a personal email server as Barack Obama’s first secretary of state.