The news that Republican nominee Donald Trump has won the 2016 US presidential election has reverberated around the world, although the repercussions of the American electorate’s monumental decision are yet to be fully understood.
What is clear on Wednesday is that Mr Trump’s decisive victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton has revealed the shifting demographic makeup and deep sociopolitical divides in American society.
White voters overwhelmingly gave Mr Trump the keys to the White House: exit poll data says they made up 70 per cent of all voters, and 58 per cent of them voted Republican on Tuesday.
Much has been made of the plight of the white working classes in this election, many of whom have been economically buffeted and feel disenfranchised by the civil rights movement, immigration, and gains in women’s rights over the last few decades.
But the idea that a vote for Trump was a working-class vote of self-interestedness regardless of his racism or misogyny, is an oversimplification. Indeed, more than 50 per cent of voters earning less than $50,000 (£40,000) cast their votes for Ms Clinton.
As with the UK’s historic decision to leave the European Union in June, the reasons the US electorate turned out in such numbers to vote for a man many lifelong Republicans have disavowed as a liar and a bully is far more compelling and complicated than demographics alone can convey.
While Trump’s campaign was undoubtedly helped by the whipping up of xenophobic sentiment - perhaps most tellingly illustrated by the emphatic support of Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke - there were many other powerful factors bubbling under the surface for decades which have influenced the 2016 election result.
The changing nature of employment
Unemployment as a whole fell to just 4.9 per cent across the US in October, marking the 73rd consecutive month of job gains for the economy.
But while the working class votes of the Midwest "Rust Belt" used to be a Democratic surety, Ms Clinton held two campaign events in four days in Michigan right before election day, and still lost the state to Mr Trump.
Education - or lack of it
As was the case with Brexit, level of education was the most important factor in determining how Americans voted.
The US, despite its wealth and resources, remains one of the most ignorant countries on earth: one American adult in five believes the Sun revolves around the Earth, two thirds can’t name the three branches of government, and more than half don’t know which parties control the House and Senate.
A politician like Trump - who flaunts his lack of experience in politics and the military as an asset - appeals greatly to voters failed by the US school system. He is proof that businessman-like determination is enough to succeed, regardless of temperament or qualifications.
Right-wing anti-establishment sentiment has been on the rise since Obama entered office
Mr Trump’s ideological platform is the straightforward evolution of the sentiment of the Tea Party’s right-wing backlash to Barack Obama’s election and a Democrat administration in 2008.
The unprecedented number of votes cast for independent candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein is also a major indicator that American voters are fed up with what is in practice a two-party voting system that does not adequately reflect their political beliefs.
Supporting the underdog is part of the American ideal
It’s mostly the media which managed to create the dynamic suggesting that Mr Trump - a self-declared billionaire - was somehow an underdog in this presidential race.
Mr Trump was attacked by pundits and commendtators with such vitriol he could cut a sympathetic figure, battling against the odds to Make America Great Again.
Mr Trump is ‘always right’, and that is psychologically compelling
Despite the fact that Mr Trump has been pulled up for factual inaccuracies and gaffes throughout the presidential race, his confidence has always managed to pull him through slip-ups which would have sunk any other candidate.
As a Stanford University psychologist told The Washington Post back in August: “[Trump’s supporters are] responding to dynamism, to force, to movement, to smiling, to facial expressions that convey authority… Trump does it with more force. He does it with more energy. Energy is contagious.”
Through force of character combined with simple, populist messaging and policy ideas, Mr Trump was able to win over voters who wouldn’t have paid attention to him without his commanding "alpha male" persona.
