Rather than going down as the first woman president, Clinton has become the Democrat who failed to extend the run of a fairly popular two-term president during a prolonged economic recovery

Just minutes earlier he campaign chairman John Podesta told a New York Democrat rally that the race was not over

Hillary Clinton called Donald Trump to concede the White House on Wednesday morning – minutes after she sent her campaign chairman to her supporters' party to say: 'It's not over.'

John Podesta was dispatched by the Democratic candidate to tell a tear-stained crowd in Manhattan's Javits Center that she would not emerge until the morning and until 'every vote is counted'.

But just minutes later Clinton gave up the race, calling her Republican rival to tell him she was standing down.

Podesta spoke shortly after Donald Trump passed the 270 mark in the electoral college after Pennsylvania and Wisconsin chose the Republican.

Trump won with 276 electoral votes to Clinton's 218, and 48 per cent of the popular vote to her 47.

Clinton is due to give her concession speech later on Wednesday.

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Donald Trump appeared onstage in New York in the early hours of Wednesday after he swept to a stunning victory

Mike Pence introduced Trump for his victory speech

Clinton (pictured after casting her vote Tuesday) has conceded her race against Donald Trump for the White House

Last night, as Clinton waited for the election results, she tweeted: 'This team has so much to be proud of. Whatever happens tonight, thank you for everything'

A White House spokesperson said early Wednesday that President Obama called Trump after his victory and invited him to the White House on Thursday to discuss the transition of power.

Trump's campaign manager Kellyanne Conway also spoke about the call between the two men during an appearance on Today Wednesday morning, saying: 'Well, it was a very warm conversation.

'We were happy to receive the call from the President and they had a great, thorough conversation about Mr. Trump's victory, he was congratulated, and I think they resolved to work together, which is exactly what this country needs - to get the current president and the president elect and others who are in leadership position to help unify and heal the country.'

She then added: 'We expect that the two gentlemen will be meeting soon.'

Clinton meanwhile has not been seen since she holed up in the Peninsula Hotel in Manhattan on Tuesday, which served as a holding area while the results rolled in.

According to a press pool report her camp ‘noshed a little bit’ on a buffet that included salmon, roasted carrots, vegan pizza, and French fries as they awaited the results.

John Podesta was dispatched by the Democratic candidate to tell a tear-stained crowd in Manhattan's Javits Center that she would not emerge until the morning and until 'every vote is counted'. But just minutes later Clinton gave up the race, calling her Republican rival to tell him she was standing down.

Chelsea Clinton and husband Marc Mezvinsky were there, along with children Charlotte and Aiden.

Also 'milling around' were longtime aide Huma Abedin, campaign manager Robby Mook, former aide Philippe Reines, and communications director Jennfier Palieri.

Only a few Clinton campaign surrogates were on hand at the Clinton party to address reporters and do TV interviews. But when the news went south for Clinton, the aides vanished.

Clinton remained in hiding Wednesday as her camp absorbed the shocking news along with the rest of the country.

Instead of savoring victory, she is now contemplating the ruins of a political career – thanks to her own self-destructing campaign.

Podesta spoke to the crowd shortly after Donald Trump passed the 270 mark in the electoral college after Pennsylvania and Wisconsin chose the Republican.

The campaign chair said he wants 'every person in this hall to know' that 'your voices and your enthusiasm means so much to her … and to all of us.'

But moments later the Democrat called her rival to concede, after one of the nastiest electoral races in living memory.

Hillary Clinton's motorcade is parked outside The Peninsula Hotel in New York in the early hours of Wednesday

Supporters of President-elect Donald Trump walk past Hillary Clinton's motorcade outside at The Peninsula Hotel in New York

People were held near a lobby as Clinton arrived at the Peninsula Hotel on Tuesday. She has not been seen since

Police waited outside the Manhattan hotel as the Democrat candidate arrived

It was not immediately clear why Clinton did not choose to address her supporters. When Podesta first came out to address the crowd, his call that ‘every vote should count’ hinted at a possible legal strategy to challenge close elections.

But not long after Podesta’s vague statement, Clinton called Trump to concede the race, her spokesman confirmed.

The campaign didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry about why she didn’t speak to her backers.

Trump appeared moments later onstage to give his victory speech, saying the forgotten people of the country 'will be forgotten no longer'.

It is a second disappointment for Clinton. who fought back from a 2008 defeat to win a second chance at the presidency and try to break through the ultimate 'glass ceiling'.

But in the end it was her own campaign and Democrats' hopes of extending the Obama legacy that were shattered.

Rather than going down as the first woman president, she became the Democrat who failed to extend the run of a fairly popular two-term president during a prolonged economic recovery - and lost an election to a political novice with a killer instinct for political attacks, but whose own party held him at a distance.

Her defeat had one mother – herself – but many fathers, including husband Bill Clinton, Russian President Vladimir Putin (according to U.S. intelligence), FBI Director James Comey, and disgraced ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner.

Trump appeared onstage on Wednesday to give his victory speech, saying the forgotten people of the country 'will be forgotten no longer'

A supporter of Clinton bows her head as the results come in

Clinton's path to the White House, which at times seemed almost inevitable during the 2016 campaign, had its origins in her defeat to Barack Obama in 2008. She became his loyal secretary of state, built up her popularity and chits, and began assembling a team that would become a juggernaut campaign for the White House.

All her efforts couldn't survive the onslaught of negative issues that clung to her campaign, against an opponent who played up nationalistic themes and cast her as part of the problem.

Clinton showed vigor on the campaign trail during a marathon day of campaigning on Monday that took her to Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and New York. She smiled and met with supporters on an airport tarmac at 3:30 a.m..

Her voice grew hoarse at times, but she showed energy, bounding up the stairs to her jet.

The all-out schedule was in part a response to Trump’s repeated questioning of her ‘stamina.’ After her team frowned on any talk of the subject at first, Clinton began addressing it head-on in her speeches.

She joked that her four-hour debate with Trump proved she had the stamina for the job. On Tuesday morning she was up at 6.30 a.m., looking tired but cheerful, to vote near her home in Chappaqua.

Trump voted earlier on Tuesday with his wife Melania

Podesta spoke shortly after Donald Trump passed the 270 mark in the electoral college with AP giving him Pennsylvania and Fox News giving him Wisconsin – the two giving him a combined 30 votes, taking him to 274

But just hours later she was forced to bow out of the race in a result that stunned not only her campaign but the country as well.

'Never been as wrong on anything in my life,' tweeted Obama campaign guru David Plouffe, who advised the Clinton campaign and sometimes acted as a campaign surrogate.

Predictable or not, it often seemed as if Clinton was unable to shake old scandals.

Prayers unanswered: Clinton, pictured in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Monday, could not stem the tide for Trump

For many of the critical months of her campaign, she was under an active investigation by the FBI for potential mishandling of classified information.

Her husband's foundation was revealed to have accepted seven-figure donations from foreign monarchs. News outlets chronicled a series of relationships between foundation donors who then sought or got meetings, face time, or invitations.

And her cozy speeches to financial institutions were labeled unseemly by Democratic challengers and worse by Republicans.

Then, during the final weeks of the campaign when most voters are paying the most attention, FBI Director James Comey dropped a bombshell - that the bureau was taking another look at Clinton's emails.

It didn't take long before it was revealed that the emails in question were contained on the laptop of disgraced ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner.

The revelation that the FBI had discovered emails relating to its probe of Clinton's private email server dealt a heavy blow to the Democrat's campaign with just 11 days to go. The emails were found on devices belonging to Anthony Weiner, husband of longtime Clinton aide Huma Abedin

Clinton with Huma Abedin on her campaign plain in New York in October

A Clinton supporter watches the results roll in at the Democrat election rally in New York

The scandal connected Clinton's email scandal – already a trust issue that the public ranked as serious in opinion polls – to Weiner, who is married to Clinton's longtime aide Huma Abedin and who is under investigation for having allegedly sent lewd texts to an underage girl, as reported by DailyMail.com. Weiner had quit Congress in 2011 for sending crotch shots of himself online.

The issue was so hot that longtime aide Huma Abedin, who is separating from Weiner, got effectively grounded from the Clinton campaign plane for days while the story played out.

A huge Hillary sign at the Javits Center in Manhattan, where Clinton was supposed to be hosting her victory party

On the campaign trail, Trump began reading reports about dubious Clinton Foundation activities verbatim, and hanging all of it around Clinton. Her State Department had a role in vetting paid speeches and other activities for potential conflicts of interest.

During the presidential debates, Team Trump decided to use the former president to muddy his wife. He brought four Clinton accusers to the debate in a ploy to try to rattle his rival. Paula Jones, who sued Clinton for sexual harassment and won a big settlement, and Juanita Broadderick, who accused him of rape, went to St. Louis for the debate and gave interviews to Reporters covering the slash-and-burn campaign.

Clinton kept her cool in the debate – but the stunt served as a reminder to the country of the baggage, charges, lawsuits, and publicity wars that have trailed the Clintons for years.

To win, Clinton had to maintain Obama's winning coalition, which included black voters thrilled by his historic candidacy, women, young people, and other minorities. The electoral college favored her, or at least so most analysts said.

Before the second presidential debate Trump held a press conference with four women who have accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault (from right: Paula Jones, Kathy Shelton, Juanita Broaddrick, and Kathleen Willey)

President Obama campaigned fiercely for Clinton but his efforts were in vain

Vice president Joe Biden said earlier this year he regretted not running in the 2016 race

So did the massive financial resources of party incumbency and a donor network decades in the making. She raised more than $500 million for her campaign, staffed an office in Brooklyn, and spent heavily on data and analytical components of campaigning.

Trump tried to use Clinton's massive cash advantage against her. He said Clinton was in her donors' pocket – and that he couldn't be bought because he was already rich.

But many of the advantages and resources that scared off potential Democratic primary challengers also contributed to her undoing. Her once enviable personal popularity collapsed under the weight of multiple scandals, from her private email server to the Benghazi attack to a web of interactions between foreign nations, donors, and the Clinton Foundation.

The scandals, or in some cases the appearance of them, threw a blanket over her campaign. She tried to roll out a series of policy proposals, but ended up dealing with hacks and emails until the final days of her campaign.

In the final weeks of the campaign, emails hacked from the personal account of campaign chairman John Podesta provided daily distractions. Even some of her own advisers were revealed to question Clinton's judgement.

The campaign didn't confirm the veracity of the emails, and in a dramatic moment of the race Podesta blasted the Russian government for being behind the hack, citing the conclusions of U.S. officials. The campaign tried to ignore them, but the hacked leaks kept coming.

Trump in debates and appearances unerringly failed to criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin, something Clinton blasted him for when she tried to label him as a 'loose cannon' who couldn't be trusted to keep the nation's nuclear codes.

Trump seized on each of the issues in Clinton's expanding portfolio of baggage, and branded his rival as 'crooked Hillary.'

He read up on accounts of the Clinton family dealings, often ripping attacks from the headlines and working them into his speeches, which featured daily improvisations and occasional outbursts that infatuated the media and delighted his supporters.

Clinton deployed an army of powerful surrogates to no avail

Bad omen: Bill and Chelsea Clinton were spotted looking unenthusiastic during Hillary's performance in the first debate

Chelsea Clinton and her husband Marc Mezvinsky, plus their kids Charlotte and Aidan, were photographed heading to vote on Election Day in New York City

He declared himself the candidate of change, labeled Clinton part of a corrupt establishment, and turned what Clinton considered her greatest asset - experience -against her.

The email issue rocked her campaign from its outset, after it was revealed that Clinton kept a private server and used it for her personal email.

The Clinton camp carved out a path to victory that didn't depend on the candidate being universally beloved. Her high negative ratings had become virtually baked in, hovering in the mid 40s. But Trump's were frequently worse.

Clinton assembled a campaign team of more than 800 staffers, stocked with bright lights from Barack Obama's successful 2008 and 2012 efforts.

She was going up against a historically tough challenge, essentially running for a third term to continue the power of the party in office. As the primaries wore on, her team shifted its opposition research from Republicans who had seemed more plausible, like fresh-faced Florida senator Marco Rubio.

A woman in Manhattan hugs a child as they react to the Trump victory

Trump had vulnerabilities of his own. He was getting sued for fraud by students at his Trump University. He hadn't released his taxes. There were doubts about his wealth. He had been through multiple bankruptcies. And the New York Times reported he may not have paid any income taxes for 18 years.

Trump was able to keep off his heels by launching constant attacks in Clinton's direction.

Her campaign suffered a bruising blow less than two weeks out when FBI Director James Comey, who had earlier declined to recommend criminal charges against her in connection with her emails, announced that the bureau was looking at additional information.

As it turns out, the bureau had come across additional Clinton emails on the laptop of disgraced ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner. Then, just two days before the end of the campaign, while Clinton was trying to score feel-good headlines, Comey announced that the bureau hadn't found out anything to change his original recommendation from this summer.

She faced another major headwind when Wikileaks dumped the other trove of documents that defined the campaign – hacked emails from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. They exposed myriad internecine battles, cozy contacts with the press, and efforts to kneecap Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders' primary run.

As has always been the case since she launched her own political career with a run for the New York Senate, her husband, Bill Clinton, served as both an asset and a curse.

The former president was a top surrogate, campaigning around the country with her. The campaign was able to send him to rural and industrial areas where his brand was stronger than his wife's, and he continued to have a natural charm on the campaign trail that his wife sometimes lacked.

But his foundation was the focus of constant criticism during the campaign. The Clintons made millions after Bill Clinton left the White House, off lucrative consulting and speaking arrangements the former president developed, all while running a ballooning charity foundation. Both Clintons had delivered paid speeches for more than $200,000 a pop and penned books.

Bill Clinton campaigned for his wife, but his foundation was the focus of constant criticism during the campaign

Trump's supporters called for Clinton to be jailed amid investigations into her private email server and accusations of inappropriate ties to her Clinton Foundation while she was secretary of state

The notorious moment when Clinton had to exit a 9/11 memorial early and stumbled on the way to her car. It was only later that she revealed she had pneumonia. Trump seized on the incident as proof that she did not have the stamina to be president

After Trump slashed through 16 other Republicans to win the GOP primary, Team Clinton was determined not to get defined by the brash real estate mogul the way fellow Republicans were despite her baggage.

Clinton was perceived to be in a substantially stronger position, having dispensed with Sanders earlier in the process, allowing her to focus on reunifying her party and putting on a political convention that got her a bump in the polls.

One of the greatest speeches of Clinton's career came in defeat. She had battled Obama long after she had a realistic chance of beating him. Even some of her close advisers realized it was time for her to get out.

Then, inside Washington's National Building Museum, she delivered a triumphant call for a woman to crack the highest 'glass ceiling in the world' – the presidency.

She jetted around the country as secretary of state, and her staff kept track of the miles as she approached the record. She left office with high popularity.

President Obama gave a joint interview with her when the left the job in 2013, in something that had the feel of a hand-off. Many of his current or former White House aides migrated to her campaign or pro-Clinton organizations.

Vice President Joe Biden considered challenging her, but elected to stay out of the race. Baggage from his own background started showing up in the press, dating to the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings from the 1990s.

Sanders ran a stronger challenge than many expected, but her primary never approached the proving ground of the GOP slug fest. Even so, Sanders exposed weaknesses that Trump picked up and turned into more biting attacks.

Trump during the campaign accused Clinton of playing the 'woman card' – an insult she embraced.

She said regularly at her rallies that if Trump wanted to accuse her of playing the woman card, 'Then deal me in!'

She crafted whole swaths of her campaign about gender and other identity issues. She brought former Miss Universe Alicia Machado to a presidential debate to bring up Trump's treatment of her.

After the release of the infamous 'p****' tape, where Trump got caught on a hot mic talking about grabbing women by the genitals, Clinton accused Trump of mistreating and demeaning and assaulting women.

Clinton was perceived to be in a substantially stronger position, having dispensed with Sanders earlier in the process. Sanders eventually became a Clinton supporter

The Democrat campaigned alongside Alicia Machado, the former Miss Universe whom Trump allegedly called 'Miss Piggy'

The stars welcomed Clinton with open arms, including music uber-couple Beyonce and Jay-Z, but it was not enough

She accused him of having a 'dark' divisive vision, and tried to stress hopeful themes and inclusiveness by bashing his proposed Muslim ban, and his plan to build a wall on the U.S. Mexico border.

The would-be president drew on empowering songs by female singers, like 'Fight Song'. Her campaign's closing argument TV ad used Katy Perry's 'Roar' as its soundtrack. Her campaign printed signs that said 'Love trumps hate.'

She opened her rallies with empowering themes by female singers, including 'Roar' by Katy Perry and 'Rise Up' by Andre Day.

As the campaign neared its conclusion, Clinton increasingly leaned on slashing attacks on her rival, even as she told supporters she would rather be talking the issues.

If her rivals looked enviously at Trump's skein of large crowds (though not always as large as he said they were), they didn't admit it. Clinton's own events were frequently far smaller. The campaign said it wasn't rally size that mattered, but media pickup and how it looked on television.

If her campaign team was worried, they didn't betray it aboard her campaign plane. Clinton made a last-minute visit to Michigan – but her campaign downplayed it as a move that made since since the state had no early voting.

Clinton's last day on the trail had the feel of a victory lap and a concert tour. It featured performances by Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, and Lady Gaga.

Clinton flew home to a final rally with staff members and supporters, who cheered wildly at 3:30 in the morning when her 'Stronger Together' plane landed. There were about 200 people there.