US President-elect Donald Trump beat Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to become Time magazine's Person of the Year for 2016.

The president-elect's selection was announced Wednesday morning on NBC's "Today" show.

Modi was seen as the frontrunner for the title as he had won the online reader's poll for TIME Person of the Year 2016, beating out not just Trump, but a host of other world leaders too.

Modi had won with 18 per cent of the vote when the poll closed last night, getting significantly more votes than his closest contenders, including Obama, Trump and Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange, who all received 7 per cent of the 'yes' vote.

However, Time's editors decided Trump as the final Person of the Year. "For all of Trump’s public life, tastemakers and intellectuals have dismissed him as a vulgarian and carnival barker, a showman with big flash and little substance. But what those critics never understood was that their disdain gave him strength. For years, he fed off the disrespect and used it to grab more tabloid headlines, to connect to common people," the TIME magazine said in its article explaining why Trump won the title.

The Manhattan real estate magnate went from fiery underdog to win the White House over Democrat Hillary Clinton. Trump won the Electoral College vote, while Clinton won the popular vote. Time's managing editor Nancy Gibbs said Clinton was the No. 2 finalist