Republican Candidate Donald Trump, has been elected as the 45th President of the United States with 276 electoral votes while his rival Hillary Clinton polled 218 electoral votes .
Trump defeated the seemingly choice candidate Hillary Clinton of the Democratic Party to emerge as the first President without prior military or political background.
Clinton’s hopes faded and Trump cemented his win after taking key swing states of Florida, North Carolina and Ohio early this morning
Trumps win has put an end to eight years of Democratic rule and sending the United States on a new, uncertain path.
According to CNN, Clinton had already called Trump to concede defeat and also congratulate him on his victory.
A short time earlier, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta told supporters at her election rally in New York to go home. “Several states are too close to call so we’re not going to have anything more to say tonight,” he said.
According to Reuters, Trumps win poses a lot of questions the United States at home and abroad.
He campaigned on a pledge to take the country on a more isolationist, protectionist “America First” path. He has vowed to impose a 35 percent tariff on goods exported to the United States by U.S. companies that went abroad.
Both candidates, albeit Trump more than Clinton, had historically low popularity ratings in an election that many voters characterized as a choice between two unpleasant alternatives.
Trump, who at 70 will be the oldest first-term U.S. president, came out on top after a bitter and divisive campaign that focused largely on the character of the candidates and whether they could be trusted to serve as the country’s 45th president.
The presidency will be his first elected office, and it remains to be seen how he will work with Congress. During the campaign Trump was the target of sharp disapproval, not just from Democrats but from many in his own party.
Trump entered the race 17 months ago and survived a series of seemingly crippling blows, many of them self-inflicted.
Some of the blows included the emergence in October of a 2005 video in which he boasted about making unwanted sexual advances on women.
He apologized but within days, several women emerged to say he had groped them, allegations he denied.
He was also said to have lost all three Presidential Debates with Hillary Clinton.
