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BREAK­ING: Trump wins White House in as­ton­ish­ing vic­tory


WASH­ING­TON (AP) — Don­ald Trump was elected Amer­i­ca’s 45th pres­i­dent Tues­day, an as­ton­ish­ing vic­tory for a celebrity busi­ness­man and po­lit­i­cal novice who cap­i­tal­ized on vot­ers’ eco­nomic anx­i­eties, took ad­van­tage of racial ten­sions and over­came a string of sex­ual as­sault al­le­ga­tions on his way to the White House.

His tri­umph over Hillary Clin­ton will end eight years of De­mo­c­ra­tic dom­i­nance of the White House and threat­ens to undo ma­jor achieve­ments of Pres­i­dent Barack Obama. He’s pledged to act quickly to re­peal Oba­ma’s land­mark health care law, re­voke the nu­clear agree­ment with Iran and rewrite im­por­tant trade deals with other coun­tries, par­tic­u­larly Mex­ico and Canada.

The Re­pub­li­can blasted through De­moc­rats’ long­stand­ing fire­wall, car­ry­ing Penn­syl­va­nia and Wis­con­sin, states that had­n’t voted for a GOP pres­i­den­tial can­di­date since the 1980s. He needed to win nearly all of the com­pet­i­tive bat­tle­ground states, and he did just that, claim­ing Florida, Ohio, North Car­olina and oth­ers.

Global stock mar­kets and U.S. stock fu­tures plunged deeply, re­flect­ing in­vestor alarm over what a Trump pres­i­dency might mean for the econ­omy and trade.

A New York real es­tate de­vel­oper who lives in a spark­ing Man­hat­tan high-rise, Trump forged a strik­ing con­nec­tion with white, work­ing class Amer­i­cans who feel left be­hind in a chang­ing econ­omy and di­ver­si­fy­ing coun­try. He cast im­mi­gra­tion, both from Latin Amer­ica and the Mid­dle East, as the root of the prob­lems plagu­ing many Amer­i­cans and taped into fears of ter­ror­ism em­a­nat­ing at home and abroad.

Trump will take of­fice with Con­gress ex­pected to be fully un­der Re­pub­li­can con­trol. GOP Sen­ate can­di­dates fended off De­mo­c­ra­tic chal­lengers in key states and ap­peared poised to main­tain the ma­jor­ity. Re­pub­li­cans also main­tained their grip on the House.

Sen­ate con­trol means Trump will have great lee­way in ap­point­ing Supreme Court jus­tices, which could mean a ma­jor change to the right that would last for decades.

Trump up­ended years of po­lit­i­cal con­ven­tion on his way to the White House, lev­el­ing harshly per­sonal in­sults on his ri­vals, deem­ing Mex­i­can im­mi­grants rapists and mur­der­ers, and vow­ing to tem­porar­ily sus­pend Mus­lim im­mi­gra­tion to the U.S. He never re­leased his tax re­turns, break­ing with decades of cam­paign tra­di­tion, and es­chewed the kind of ro­bust data and field ef­forts that helped Obama win two terms in the White House, re­ly­ing in­stead on his large, free-wheel­ing ral­lies to en­er­gize sup­port­ers. His cam­paign was fre­quently in chaos, and he cy­cled through three cam­paign man­agers this year.

His fi­nal cam­paign man­ager, Kellyanne Con­way, touted the team’s ac­com­plish­ments as the fi­nal re­sults rolled in, writ­ing on Twit­ter that “rally crowds mat­ter” and “we ex­panded the map.”

The mood at Clin­ton’s party grew bleak as the night wore out, with some sup­port­ers leav­ing, oth­ers cry­ing and hug­ging each other. Top cam­paign aides stopped re­turn­ing calls and texts, as Clin­ton and her fam­ily hun­kered down in a lux­ury ho­tel watch­ing the re­turns.

At 2 a.m., Clin­ton cam­paign chair­man John Podesta told the crowd to head home for the night. “We’re still count­ing votes and every vote should count,” he said.

Trump will in­herit an anx­ious na­tion, deeply di­vided by eco­nomic and ed­u­ca­tional op­por­tu­ni­ties, race and cul­ture.

Exit polls un­der­scored the frac­tures: 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 two-thirds of His­pan­ics voted for the De­mo­c­rat.

Doug Ratliff, a 67-year-old busi­ness­man from Rich­lands, Vir­ginia, said Trump’s elec­tion would be one of the hap­pi­est days of his life.

“This county has had no hope,” said Ratliff, who owns strip malls in the area badly beaten by the col­lapse of the coal in­dus­try. “You have no idea what it would mean for the peo­ple if Trump won. They’ll have hope again. Things will change. I know he’s not go­ing to be per­fect. But he’s got a heart. And he gives peo­ple hope.”

Trump has pledged to usher in a se­ries of sweep­ing changes to U.S. do­mes­tic and for­eign pol­icy: re­peal­ing Oba­ma’s sig­na­ture health care law, though he has been vague on what he could re­place it with; build­ing a wall along the U.S.-Mex­ico bor­der; and sus­pend­ing im­mi­gra­tion from coun­try’s 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.

The Re­pub­li­can Par­ty’s tor­tured re­la­tion­ship with its nom­i­nee was ev­i­dent right up to the end. For­mer Pres­i­dent George W. Bush and wife Laura Bush de­clined to back Trump, in­stead se­lect­ing “none of the above” when they voted for pres­i­dent, ac­cord­ing to spokesman Freddy Ford.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, a re­luc­tant Trump sup­porter, called the busi­ness­man ear­lier in the evening to con­grat­u­late him, ac­cord­ing to a Ryan spokes­woman.

De­moc­rats, as well as some Re­pub­li­cans, ex­pected Trump’s un­con­ven­tional can­di­dacy would dam­age down-bal­lot races and even flip some re­li­ably red states in the pres­i­den­tial race. But Trump held on to Re­pub­li­can ter­ri­tory, in­clud­ing in Geor­gia and Utah, where Clin­ton’s cam­paign con­fi­dently in­vested re­sources.

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 g 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.

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