Donald Trump has been elected the 45th president of the United States. His victory is an almost wholly unexpected end to a wild and careening campaign that plumbed new lows and takes the U.S. into uncharted territory. Never before has someone with so little experience and such wild temperament occupied the White House. The Republican Party also controls both houses of Congress, which means that Trump has the power to press his agenda of transformation. The problem for the country and the rest of the world is that the contents of that agenda — apart from "making American great again" — are unclear.
As of Thursday morning U.S. time, Trump secured 279 of the 538 electoral votes — topping the 270 needed to clinch the race — against 228 won by Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton, with several states yet to be called. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, Clinton won 47.7 percent of the popular vote against Trump's 47.5 percent, possibly making him the fifth winner of the election who did not gain the most votes. But the widely anticipated groundswell of support for Clinton never materialized. Clinton — a candidate whose unfavorable ratings were exceeded only by those of Trump — never managed to excite key elements of the Obama constituency, and her failure to mobilize them spelled defeat for her.
For his part, Trump never lost faith in his instincts, and remained convinced that he spoke for an untapped and under-represented constituency: disenfranchised, angry and anxious whites. The resulting effort broke all the rules and shattered the decorum of a presidential campaign. Since declaring his candidacy, Trump has offended or attacked many ethnic groups, showed flagrant disregard for the truth, displayed a meandering and undisciplined style on the stump and still managed to defeat a candidate who had perhaps the best resume of any White House hopeful.