Time magazine named President-elect Donald Trump as its Person of the Year Wednesday, citing his long-shot election victory as the reason for the award.

"It's a great honor. It means a lot," Trump said in a telephone interview on NBC's "Today" show.

The magazine's managing editor, Nancy Gibbs, said that the choice of Trump this year was "straightforward."

“Now it’s difficult to count all the ways Trump remade the game: the huckster came off more real than the scripted political pros. The cable-news addict made pollsters look like chumps,” the accompanying article in Time reads. “The fabulist out-shouted journalists fighting to separate fact from falsehood. The demagogue won more Latino and black votes than the 2012 Republican nominee.”

Trump’s former Democratic rival Hillary Clinton was the second choice, who shared the shortlist with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, The CRISPR pioneers, “The hackers” and pop singer Beyoncé.

Trump went from long-shot underdog to president-elect when he beat Clinton on Nov. 8.

Trump was on the shortlist for the 2015 award, but was beaten to it by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. At that time Trump said he had predicted that he wouldn’t win that year, and called Merkel the “person who is ruining Germany.”

I told you @TIME Magazine would never pick me as person of the year despite being the big favorite They picked person who is ruining Germany — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2015

The Associated Press contributed to this report.