In the days that led up to the election, pundits and some polling experts took a look at early voting numbers in battleground states like Florida and predicted that an unprecedented surge of Latino voters could clinch the presidency for Hillary Clinton.
It was an irresistible storyline: that many Latinos, angry about not only the rhetoric of Donald Trump, but years of draconian political measures seemingly aimed at them and at immigrants from California and Arizona to the American South, would seal the Republican candidate's defeat.
But as Tuesday drew to a close, it became apparent that there remained a much greater numerical force than the increasingly vaunted Latino electorate _ the fully activated, angry white voter.
An unprecedented uprising of non-college-educated working-class white voters _ mostly male _ turned out in mass to deliver the White House for Trump, sending his mostly white supporters into euphoric celebration.
For many Latinos, the day after would become a day of mournful and shocked recalibration on what more could have been done.
"I think there is going to be a lot of dissecting as we sift through what is left of this election," said Roger Salazar, a Democratic strategist who worked for the Bill Clinton administration. "Was there complacency on election day itself by Latino voters because people thought the Trump campaign was done?"
Salazar wondered whether news about the wave of early Latino voters might actually have helped inspire more white, working-class voters to head to the ballot.
Though solid numbers for the Latino vote are still not in, there are estimates that close to 30 percent of them voted for Trump. While that still represented an overwhelming victory for Clinton among the nation's second largest group, it may not have been overwhelming enough considering how strongly the white vote went for Trump.
Exit polls showed that Trump fared better with Latinos than Romney did in 2012.
A CNN exit poll showed that 65 percent of Latinos voted for Clinton, down from the 71 percent that President Obama won four years ago.
Mike Madrid, a Republican consultant based in California who specializes in election voting trends, believes the Clinton campaign mistakenly predicted larger Latino voter turnout.
"The polling was incorrect and assumptions were incorrect. There was an early surge but it peaked and hit a plateau," he said of Florida. "What appeared to be a surge was simply replacing voters who would have appeared to vote in the voting places" on Tuesday.
For many Latinos, initiatives such as Proposition 187 and other anti-immigrant measures that followed in states including Arizona were something of an awakening. But for many, the prospect of a Trump presidency had become the latest and greatest threat, with the candidate deriving considerable fuel for his campaign by railing against illegal immigration from Mexico, calling some Mexican immigrants "rapists" and pledging to build a wall that he insisted Mexico would pay for.
That the election story line pivoted from "Latinos helped defeat Trump" to President Donald J. Trump so quickly will be a slow-fading shock for many of them.
"His win, I think is really a slap in the face to women ... Latinos and minorities in this country," Angelica Salas, executive director of Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, said moments after Trump delivered his acceptance speech. "Many have awoken to the fact that we have more work to do to be considered equal in America. "
Still, Madrid and other Latino voting experts are already comparing Trump's win to what happened in 1994 in California, when voters passed Proposition 187, the ballot measure intended to deny taxpayer-funded services to those in the country illegally.
The state went blue 20 years later, largely in part to a mass mobilization of Latino voters angry about the measure's passage, Madrid said.
"California is an indicator," said Madrid, who did not support Trump. "The vestiges of Prop 187 and Pete Wilson are gone and part of history. Now we have a completely different political structure in California largely as a result of that. I suspect that is what America is going to look like in the next 20 years."
Salazar said it's a painful lesson, but "we've seen this movie before and we know how it ends."
"It took a few election cycles for Latinos to get to the point to where their voting power manifests itself. Same thing is going to happen here," she said. "I think there is going to be a lot of Latinos who are going to kick themselves that they didn't vote in this election and young Latinos are going to continue to get more engaged and turn out in bigger numbers in the future as well."
The caveat remains that Latino turnout still lags far behind other groups, including whites.
Although the Latino electorate was not enough to defeat Trump, Salazar and Madrid pointed to a Latino voting surge in some Southwest states, such as Arizona, which helped oust Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, ending a 23-year reign that spurred lawsuits and accusations of bias against Latinos while galvanizing the strong-borders movement in the U.S.
In Nevada, Latinos also helped elect Catherine Cortez Masto, who became the state's first Latina senator.
"In the Southwest what you saw was a real reconfiguration," Madrid said.
But the same is true for white voters in states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania _ a historically blue state.
"The Rust Belt broke decidedly on a racial bloc," Madrid said about white, non-college-educated voters who turned out for Trump. "Racial polarization works both ways. Working-class whites are angry."
