WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s campaign claimed victory shortly before 2 a.m. today.
Hillary Clinton in a private phone call to Trump conceded the presidential election, closing out an unpredictable campaign season. The phone call was first reported by CNN.
Trump gained momentum after capturing crucial victories in North Carolina, Ohio and Florida, where Clinton and her allies had helped spur record turnout among Democrats and Hispanic voters in early voting. Trump also battled for a breakthrough in the upper Midwest, a region that reliably backed Democrats in presidential elections for three decades. His victories left Clinton with a perilously narrow path and no margin for error in battleground states where votes were still being counted.
Clinton carried Virginia, Nevada and Colorado. Her fate hinged in part on wins in Michigan and Wisconsin, states where her campaign spent little time during the general election in anticipation of comfortable victories.
The night’s results shook financial markets around the world this morning.
Trump stood at 276 electory votes to Clinton’s 218, according to a count by The Associated Press.
As Clinton’s team anxiously waited for results to roll in, the candidate tweeted to supporters, “Whatever happens tonight, thank you for everything.”
In North Carolina, Clinton’s campaign had been banking on a surge in major urban areas. Both candidates fiercely contested North Carolina and its 15 electoral votes. In 2008, Barack Obama narrowly edged out GOP nominee John McCain in North Carolina, but Mitt Romney wrested it back for the Republicans in the 2012 race.
For Trump, victory in Ohio was vital to hopes of winning the White House.
Clinton, a fixture in American politics for decades, was hoping to become the first woman to serve as commander in chief. She faced stiff competition from Trump.
Trump picked up a number of reliably Republican states across the Western plains, while Clinton won in Democratic territory in the Northeast. But the race was to be determined by fewer than a dozen competitive states where the candidates spent tens of millions of dollars and much of the fall wooing voters.
Clinton asked voters to keep the White House in her party’s hands for a third-straight term. She cast herself as heir to President Barack Obama’s legacy and pledged to make good on his unfinished agenda, including passing immigration legislation, tightening restrictions on guns and tweaking his signature health care law.
But she struggled throughout the race with persistent questions about her honesty and trustworthiness. Those troubles flared anew late in the race when FBI Director James Comey announced a review of new emails from her tenure at the State Department. On Sunday, just two days before Election Day, Comey said there was nothing in the material to warrant criminal charges against Clinton.
“I know how much responsibility goes with this,” Clinton said after voting Tuesday at her local polling station in Chappaqua, N.Y., with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, at her side. “So many people are counting on the outcome of this election, what it means for our country, and I will do the very best I can if I’m fortunate enough to win today.”
Trump voted around 11 a.m. at a public school in Midtown Manhattan, a few blocks from his home and office at Trump Tower. Accompanied by his wife, Melania, and his daughter Ivanka, Trump drew loud boos from many people in the polling place. He did not pay them heed.
Trump forged a striking connection with white, working-class Americans who feel left behind in the changing economy and diversifying country. He cast immigration, both from Latin America and the Middle East, as the root of many problems plaguing the nation and called for building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
“I see so many hopes and so many dreams out there that didn’t happen, that could have happened, with leadership, with proper leadership,” he said by telephone on Fox News before casting his own ballot in Manhattan. “And people are hurt so badly.”
Trump was monitoring the returns early Tuesday evening from his apartment in Trump Tower, according to former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.
“He’s calm. We’re all cautiously optimistic,” Giuliani said when asked to describe the mood within Trump’s home. “We think it’s going to be very, very close. We know there is a populism across the country that’s powerful and he has been lifted by it.”
But the Republican Party’s tortured relationship with its nominee was evident right up to the end. Former President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura Bush, declined to back Trump, instead selecting “none of the above” when they voted for president, spokesman Freddy Ford said.
THE SURPRISE
Trump’s supporters were stunned by the direction of the race.
Austin Daily, a 20-year old college student from Troy, N.Y., stood in front of the White House in shock late Tuesday. He came to the White House Tuesday in a blazer and tie prepared to protest a Clinton victory. Now he was getting ready to celebrate.
“Every poll showed a victory for Clinton,” Daily said. “Not one poll showed a Trump victory. Not even Fox News.”
Excitement was building inside Trump’s party late Tuesday night at a hotel ballroom a few blocks from Trump Tower. Supporters high-fived each one another and excitedly checked their smartphones as the results poured in and Trump’s chances of an upset appeared brighter.
“It’s Florida!” exclaimed Richard Lucy, a 57-year-old investor from New York City, as Fox News called the Sunshine State just before 11 p.m. He leapt up from his seat to cheer the result.
“If we win Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota, this place is going to go crazy,” added an excited Lucy, who wore a red “Make America Great Again” hat.
At 1 a.m. Clinton remained at New York City’s Peninsula Hotel with Bill Clinton and longtime aide and confidante Cheryl Mills. Other top aides had moved to a roped-off room at the nearby Javits Center.
A party atmosphere in Clinton’s election night headquarters at the Javits Center began to darken midevening. When Trump took Ohio, even though his victory there had been predicted, a nervous current passed around the room.
Top Clinton aides who had circulated among the press risers had long since disappeared. The only Clinton campaign staff in evidence as 11 p.m. approached were fairly junior press aides, and they looked nervous and uncertain.
Senior advisers were not answering their phones.
A trickle of supporters began streaming out of the Javitz Center as the hour approached midnight.
Julia Beatty, 38, began walking down the stairs toward the exit with her Clinton sticker peeling off of her leather jacket.
“I’m actually speechless right now,” Beatty said.
MARKETS STORMY
Dow futures and Asian stock prices fell sharply as investors panicked over uncertainties on trade, immigration and geopolitical tensions.
During the campaign, Trump threatened to greatly restrict immigration to the U.S., renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement and reject a Pacific Rim trade initiative known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He also vowed to build a wall along the United States’ southern border and force Mexico to pay for it.
Dow futures were down 3.7 percent, or 679 points, at 17,612.00 and S&P futures had dropped 4.4 percent to 2,041.70.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 stock index closed 5.4 percent lower, recouping some losses, at 16,251.54.
Shares had been higher early today in Asia’s trading session but then turned sharply when Trump first gained the lead in the electoral vote count.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng slumped 3.6 percent to 22,086.73. South Korea’s Kospi shed 3.4 percent to 1,935.98, the Shanghai Composite index fell 1.3 percent to 3,106.23 and Australia’s S&P ASX/200 in sank 1.9 percent to 5,156.60.
The price of gold, seen as a safe place for investors’ money in times of uncertainty, soared 4.7 percent to $1,334.30 an ounce.
The election uncertainty also jolted currency markets, sending investors fleeing from the dollar, which plunged 3.5 percent to 101.26 yen from 105.46 earlier in the day. The euro rose to $1.1293 from $1.1020.
Exit polls underscored the deep divisions that have defined the 2016 contest. Women nationwide supported Clinton by a double-digit margin, while men were significantly more likely to back Trump. More than half of white voters backed the Republican, while nearly 9 in 10 blacks and twothirds of Hispanics voted for the Democrat.
Preliminary exit polls indicated that turnout shares among Republicans, Democrats and independents would be comparable to 2012.
Seven in 10 Americans who went to the polls Tuesday said immigrants now in the country illegally should be allowed to stay, while just a quarter said they should be deported. More than half oppose building a border wall, according to the exit polls, which were conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Research.
Republican National Committee officials said in a phone call with reporters Tuesday that they were not concerned that high levels of Hispanic turnout in Florida boded badly for their candidates, saying the party had made large gains in voter registration in the state. They noted that in Ohio, counties such as Cuyahoga, Franklin and Hamilton that supported President Obama in 2012 saw a drop in early voting, while counties such as Warren, Miami and Greene that backed Mitt Romney saw an increase.
“We feel very confident about winning today,” said Jason Miller, Trump’s senior communications adviser.
But Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, who heads the think tank NDN, said Republicans and many political pundits have failed to grasp “how much the U.S. population is changing.”
He noted the number of eligible Hispanic voters has increased from 18 million to 27 million since 2008, and the number of millennial voters has risen from 35 million to 70 million during that period. Since those two voting blocs currently favor Democrats, Rosenberg said, the change poses “an existential threat” to Republicans “if they do not start to create a solution to these demographic trend lines.”
DIVIDED ELECTORATE
Before Tuesday, almost 45 million people had cast ballots for president. Many expressed relief the end was in sight after an election season in which personal attacks often drowned out the issues.
Clinton denounced Trump for calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” and promoting a ban on Muslims entering the U.S., and for his long line of remarks about women that culminated in an audio in which he bragged about grabbing their genitals. Her campaign was hoping high turnout among Hispanics push her over the top in states like Florida and Nevada.
“I grew up in a Hispanic family, and the way that Donald Trump has referred to illegal immigrants — being from illegal immigrants, I took that to heart,” said Angel Salazar, a 22-year-old sanitation associate from Oklahoma City. “I don’t like anything that he said. I don’t like his views. So I voted for Hillary Clinton because she supports us.”
In Manassas, Va., where there is both a sizable immigrant population and support for Trump, James Bowers, 72, said working-class Americans like himself have seen their personal liberties erode with a Democrat in the White House.
“These eight years are the worst eight years I’ve seen in my life,” Bowers said. “It’s become a dictatorship, and if Hillary wins, she’ll continue that dictatorship.”
But 43-year-old Yesenia Luna, the daughter of an immigrant from El Salvador, said she voted for Clinton because “we have to be the difference for all the other Latinos in this country.”
Many Republicans still expect their party to continue to probe Clinton’s use of a private email server and possible conflicts of interest raised by her role at the Clinton Foundation, which could complicate her relationship with Congress if she wins the White House.
Lori Schwabenbauer, 54, voted in Chester County, Pa., then drove into Philadelphia to celebrate her birthday. She is a Republican, and Trump and Sen. Pat Toomey received her vote, but she was expecting a Clinton win. Asked whether she would want Republicans to continue probing Clinton’s scandals if she won, Schwabenbauer gave a qualified yes.
“I don’t think anyone’s above the law,” she said, “but I don’t want her to be jailed just because I don’t like her.”
Information for this article was contributed by Julie Pace, Robert Furlow, Catherine Lucey, Bradley Klapper, Vivian Salama, Hope Yen, Jill Colvin, Lisa Lerer, Emily Swanson and staff members of The Associated Press; by Matt Flegenheimer, Patrick Healy and Jonathan Martin of The New York Times; and by Matea Gold, David A. Fahrenthold, Anne Gearan, Sean Sullivan, Scott Clement, Robert Costa, Juliet Eilperin, Brian Murphy, David Weigel, Laura Vozzella, Antonio Olivo and Kelsey Snell of The Washington Post.