NEW YORK // Donald Trump promised to heal the nation’s deep wounds and be a president for all Americans on Wednesday as he declared victory at the end of the country’s most divisive election in living memory.
The political outsider, who promised to build a wall with Mexico and ban Muslims from entering the US during a vicious campaign, will become the 45th president after pulling off a shock win that confounded the pollsters and sent jitters through world markets.
Hillary Clinton telephoned her bitter rival to concede defeat in the early hours of Wednesday but it was almost midday Eastern Time (9pm UAE) before she delivered a concession speech.
“This is painful and it will be for a long time,” she said, adding that she had offered to work with Mr Trump.
She called on her supporters to respect the result, saying: “Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead.”
In his victory speech after passing the crucial figure of 270 electoral college votes, Mr Trump had struck a conciliatory tone towards the woman he had promised to lock up after reaching the White House.
“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,” the 70-year-old said at a victory party in a Manhattan hotel.
“I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all of Americans.”
In a post-election ritual meant to signal a peaceful transition, president Barack Obama said he was heartened by Mr Trump’s call for unity after his stunning victory and “we are now all rooting for his success in uniting and leading the country.” The White House said Mr Obama and Mr Trump will meet on Thursday to discuss the handover of power.
Mr Trump will need more than words to mend some of the damage done during almost 18 months of bombastic rhetoric. At his campaign launch he referred to Mexicans as rapists and drug smugglers, and went on to alienate senior portions of the Republican party and promised to imprison women who had illegal abortions.
However, his authoritarian message and economic populism propelled him to victory in the crucial swing states of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Victory was inevitable when he clinched Wisconsin, a reliably Democratic state since 1988.
David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s chief election strategist, said Mr Trump’s message, which hammered away at Mrs Clinton and her 30-year record in public life had struck a chord with voters.
“This was a primal scream on behalf of the US electorate against the status quo,” he told CNN.
It leaves a country divided between the coastal, liberal cities – such as New York, Washington and Los Angeles – and a vast hinterland that shows up as red on election maps.
The victory of the controversial billionaire was enough to send global markets into free fall, reviving memories of the chaos that followed Britain's Brexit vote in June. Investors scrambled to transfer money into safe havens such as gold and the Japanese yen.
As the morning wore on, world leaders began sending their congratulations.
Russia’s Vladimir Putin, whose security services are accused of hacking Mrs Clinton’s campaign, sent Mr Trump a congratulatory telegram and said he hoped for a restoration of good relations between their countries.
“We are aware that it is a difficult path, in view of the unfortunate degradation of relations between the Russian Federation and the United States,” he said.
Mexican president Enrique Pena Nieto said he looked forward to working with the president-elect even as his ministers dealt with the financial fallout from the election and a plunging peso, which reached an all-time low.
The sanguine messages belie the questions now pulsing around the world.
Mr Trump managed to pull off his win without issuing many detailed policy proposals. His foreign counterparts will want to know how serious he is about protectionist trade measures and whether he will continue to support Nato.
And can he staunch the outpouring of misogynistic and at times racist language among his supporters, blamed for fuelling a rise in hate crimes against Muslims and immigrants?
In the early hours of Wednesday morning, those gathered at Mr Trump’s victory party greeted their candidate’s victory with cries of, “Lock her up, lock her up,” directed at Mrs Clinton.
Meanwhile Clinton supporters cried at their event across town as they watched a wave of supposedly reliable states break towards Mr Trump.
Opinion polls on the eve of the election suggested that Mrs Clinton had as much as a six-point lead in the national vote. And with decades of political experience, her team was also the more organised on the ground.
It counted for little on a night that will send pollsters back to their models to work out what went wrong.
With three states still to be declared, Mr Trump won 279 electoral college votes and Mrs Clinton had 228. With almost 125 million votes counted, The Associated Press tally had Mrs Clinton with 47.7 per cent and Mr Trump with 47.5 per cent.
The numbers revealed that the Republican candidate had drawn support from white, working class Americans who previously backed Barack Obama but in this election felt left behind in a changing country, as well as a boost in voter numbers in white rural areas.
It vindicates the populist billionaire’s claim that millions of forgotten Americans had endured enough of political insiders running the country.
Mr Trump’s insurgent campaign received a substantial boost in the final 11 days when the FBI director, James Comey, announced he was reviewing a new batch of emails connected with Mrs Clinton’s use of a private server.
On Sunday, Mr Comey said he would not be recommending any criminal charges for the Democratic candidate, effectively putting her in the clear. But the intervention had already focused attention on Mrs Clinton in the final days of campaigning and on one of Mr Trump’s major lines of attack.
foreign.desk@thenational.ae
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US ELECTION: The National's full coverage
¦ Rob Crilly: 'Donald Trump is going to be our president'
¦ Colin Randall: Can Trump unite a divided nation?
¦ Samanth Subramanian: Trump victory triggers bad Brexit memories
¦ Opinion: What the first 100 days of Donald Trump will look like
¦ In pictures: Trump supporters celebrate
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