“Why did he win? The answer is that the dynamics were always in that one direction — the mood of America,” pollster Peter Hart said. | Getty Clinton suffers devastating loss to Trump

Hillary Clinton made history on Tuesday but the unwelcome kind, suffering a shocking defeat to Donald Trump after she entered Election Day riding a wave of confidence, an edge in the early vote and a lead in the polls.

Her rejection, despite vastly outspending Trump on the airwaves and out-investing him in organizational muscle the battleground states, underscored an undercurrent of unprecedented anger and frustration coursing through the American electorate.


Trump weathered late accusations of sexual assault, a tape of him bragging about groping women by the genitals, and revelations that he spent years not paying taxes — all in October. He won despite never truly bringing together the Republican establishment behind his candidacy, as he crisscrossed the country with a small coterie of advisers and surrogates in the final days. Clinton drew upon the united firepower of the modern Democratic Party.

But in the end, it was not enough to elect the first woman president. Trump proved an alluring and proudly politically incorrect vessel for an American public fed up far beyond the understanding of the traditional political class.

“Every election is a choice between continuity and change,” said longtime Democratic pollster Peter Hart. And, for all Trump’s flaws, he was the candidate of change. “Why did he win? The answer is that the dynamics were always in that one direction — the mood of America.”

Clinton was a former secretary of state, senator, and first lady, running for the third consecutive term of Democratic rule in the White House — something which hasn’t happened since before World War II.

She also suffered for nearly her entire candidacy the self-inflicted wound of maintaining her own private email server while secretary of state, which spurred an FBI investigation and undermined her trustworthiness in the public eye.

She entered November as the second most disliked presidential candidate in modern American history — only behind Trump himself.

But Trump was a political neophyte who outflanked her with his simplistic call for the restoration of a bygone era of American power. He rallied thousands to his campaign events and tens of millions to the polls with a tagline that became immediately recognizable by friends and foes alike: “Make America Great Again.”

Hart said that following the two party conventions — after which Clinton widened her lead in the polls — he tested the two candidates’ central messages, stripping away their names.

Trump’s dour assessment (“This is a moment of crisis for our nation…”) finished ahead of Clinton’s (“Do not let anyone tell you that our country is weak…”) won across every critical swing demographic, including 49 percent to 21 percent among independents and 54 percent to 40 percent among white women.

Clinton’s defeat means the White House will go from Democratic to Republican control, threatening many of the policies enacted in the last eight years by President Barack Obama, none more so than his signature healthcare law, which Trump has vowed to repeal.

And that the “glass ceiling” of American politics — which she famously said had “18 million” cracks in it after her 2008 run — remains firmly in place. Indeed, in a sign of the vast overconfidence with which she entered Election Day, Clinton’s “victory party” on Tuesday is scheduled at the Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan. It is there that she is now expected to deliver her concession speech to Trump.