International desk – Donald Trump has been elected 45th president of United States in a stunning culmination of a campaign that defied expectations and conventions at every turn and galvanized legions of aggrieved Americans in a loud repudiation of the status quo.

Trump stunned the entire world through his win amid a negative campaign and controversial his statements and scandals that emerged during the electioneering in the United States. He shell shocked former Secretary of State and the former first lady Hillary Clinton, who was about to sure about her victory according to different opinion polls.

The Republican billionaire will be sworn in as the 45^th American President on January 20, 2017.

Trump called the election in the morning of Wednesday after an agonising wait as projected victory in Wisconsin tipped Trump over the 270 electoral votes he needed. According to the latest count Trump got 289 electoral-college vote against his rival Clinton’s 218.

Trump’s Idaho campaign director Layne Bangerter said: “The voice of the people has risen up.”

The White House

Stock markets plunged around the world and Clinton supporters wept openly in New York City as the scale of Trump’s success became clear.

The nation is now preparing for a new leader who has previously vowed to ban Muslims from entering the country, build a huge wall along the border with Mexico and immediately repeal President Obama’s healthcare for the poor.

Influential Washington Post newspaper reported Hillary Clinton’s quest to make history as the first female president was thwarted by the Republican nominee’s breathtaking performance at the polls.

He was carried to victory by voters fed up with the political system and mistrustful of Clinton, a former first lady, senator and secretary of state.

Trump, a 70-year-old celebrity businessman who had never before run for office, is poised to become the oldest president ever elected to a first term. He never held any position either in the administration or in military as the other presidents of the United States.

After running a divisive campaign, Trump sounded a magnanimous note of reconciliation as he claimed victory shortly before 3 a.m. Wednesday.

“Hillary has worked very long and very hard over a long period of time and we owe her a major debt of gratitude for her service to our country,” Trump said, minutes after Clinton called him to concede.

Trump supporters celebrate victory

“I mean that very sincerely. Now it’s time for America to bind the wounds of division. We have to get together. To all Republicans, Democrats and independents across this nation, I say it is time for us to come together as one united people.”

He had portrayed his opponent as the embodiment of a rigged system that had failed the everyday American. Her credentials through a quarter-century on the national stage, which in another electoral climate would have been an asset, pegged her in his supporters’ view as the ultimate establishment insider, writes the Post.

Trump said that under his administration, “America will no longer settle for anything less than the best.” And he promised foreign countries that “while we were always put America’s interests first, we will deal fairly with everyone,” adding: “We will seek common ground, not hostility.”

The real estate developer thanked his wife, Melania, and his children for their patience, saying: “This was tough. This was tough. This political stuff is nasty and it’s tough.”

With Trump’s ascension to the White House, the nationalist wave that has swept capitals around the world — including in Britain, which voted to break from the European Union this year — came crashing onto U.S. shores.

The prospect of an impulsive authoritarian in the Oval Office rattled investors around the world.

On Wall Street, all three major stock index futures sank more than 3 percent. Japan’s Nikkei index plunged more than 2 percent; Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index fell by nearly 4 percent.

The Mexican peso — which had fallen when the Republican nominee rose in the polls during his campaign — nose-dived to an eight-year low, according to Bloomberg.

Donald Trump

The general election, which riveted the nation and produced a record television audience for a presidential debate, turned on the question of national identity. While Clinton assembled a diverse coalition that she said reflected the nation’s future, it was no match for the powerful and impassioned movement built by fanning resentments over gender, race and religion.

Trump’s promise to “Make America Great Again” inspired millions of Americans alienated by the forces of globalization and multiculturalism and deeply frustrated with the inability of Washington to address their needs.

Voters anxious about the economy, convinced that the system was stacked against them, fearful of terrorism and angry about the rising gap between rich and poor, gravitated toward Trump.

In him, they saw a fearless champion who would re-create what they recalled as an America unchallenged in the world, unthreatened at home and unfettered by the elitist forces of “political correctness.”

“It’s a movement comprised of Americans from all races, religions, backgrounds and beliefs who want and expect our government to serve the people, and serve the people it will,” Trump said in his victory speech.

He vowed: “Every single American will have the opportunity to realize his or her fullest potential. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.”

The presumption held by both campaigns, right up to the hours when polls began closing, was that Trump had a far narrower path to victory than Clinton. But he capitalized on nearly every opportunity across the electoral map.

Hillary Clinton

One by one on Tuesday night, electoral prizes that for hours had been too close to call deep into the night fell into Trump’s win column. First, Florida and Ohio. Then North Carolina. And then Pennsylvania and, at 2:30 a.m., Wisconsin.

A few minutes after 2 a.m., Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, told stunned supporters who had gathered in anticipation of celebrating her victory to go home because there would be no further statement as outstanding votes were counted. “We can wait a little longer, can’t we?” Podesta said.

Clinton claimed Colorado and Virginia as she thought she would, but she underperformed expectations in the traditionally Democratic-leaning Rust Belt states where Trump campaigned aggressively in the final weeks.

Clinton had so taken for granted a region thought of as her “blue wall” that she did not hold a single event in Wisconsin during the general election.

Control of Congress was on the line as well, with Republicans poised to maintain their majority in the House and a string of hotly competitive Senate contests going their way as well, said the Post.

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