Donald Trump pledges to be president for all Americans

Donald Trump said Wednesday he would bind the nation's deep wounds and be a president "for all Americans," as he praised his defeated rival Hillary Clinton for her years of public service.

Riding a wave of euphoria from his supporters at a victory party in his home city of New York, Trump sought to bury the divisions and rancor that had made the 18-month presidential campaign so toxic.

"For those who have chosen not to support me in the past, of which there were a few people, I'm reaching out to you for your guidance and your help so that we can work together and unify our great country," Trump said, during his speech proclaiming a stunning victory in the White House race.

"I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all of Americans."

He was also noticeably conciliatory toward his vanquished rival, whom he has spent months berating as a corrupt favorite of the Washington establishment who broke the law by using a private server to send and receive classified data.

"Hillary has worked very long and very hard over a long period of time, and we owe her a major debt of gratitude for her service to our country," he said.

"I mean that very sincerely."

The provocative billionaire president-elect, 70, said Clinton telephoned him to concede the race shortly after the state of Pennsylvania, which has voted Democratic in presidential races since 1992, was slotted into his win column.

"She congratulated us - it is about us - on our victory, and I congratulated her and her family on a very, very hard-fought campaign," he said.

The real estate mogul also pledged to "deal fairly with everyone," including "all other nations."

"We will get along with all other nations willing to get along with us. We will have great relationships," he added.

"While the campaign is over, our work on this movement is now really just beginning," Trump said, in a nod to the grass-roots anti-establishment, anti-Washington ground swell that upended the race with historic results.

"We're going to get to work immediately for the American people, and we're going to be doing a job that, hopefully, you will be so proud of your president."

Donald Trump stuns world with White House defeat of Clinton

Republican Donald Trump stunned the world by defeating heavily favored rival Hillary Clinton in Tuesday's presidential election, ending eight years of Democratic rule and sending the United States on a new, uncertain path.

A wealthy real-estate developer and former reality TV host, Trump rode a wave of anger toward Washington insiders to win the White House race against Clinton, the Democratic candidate whose gold-plated establishment resume included stints as a first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state.

Worried a Trump victory could cause economic and global uncertainty, investors were in full flight from risky assets. But the U.S. dollar and world stocks began to steady in the European morning on Wednesday, having been hammered overnight.

Trump collected enough of the 270 state-by-state electoral votes needed to win a four-year term that starts on Jan. 20, taking battleground states where presidential elections are traditionally decided, U.S. television networks projected.

He appeared with his family before cheering supporters in a New York hotel ballroom, saying it was time to heal the divisions caused by the campaign and find common ground after a campaign that exposed deep differences among Americans.

"It is time for us to come together as one united people," Trump said. "I will be president for all Americans."

He said he had received a call from Clinton to congratulate him on the win and praised her for her service and for a hard-fought campaign.

His comments were an abrupt departure from his campaign trail rhetoric in which he repeatedly slammed Clinton as "crooked" amid supporters' chants of "lock her up."

Republicans also kept control of Congress. Television networks projected the party would retain majorities in both the 100-seat U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, where all 435 seats were up for grabs.

At Clinton's election event at the Javits conference center a mile away from Trump's event, an electric atmosphere among supporters expecting a Clinton win slowly grew grim as her losses piled up.

Clinton opted not to appear at her event, instead sending campaign chairman John Podesta out to tell her supporters to go home. "We're not going to have anything more to say tonight," he said.

Clinton was expected to speak on Wednesday morning, an aide said.

Prevailing in a cliffhanger race that opinion polls had clearly forecast as favoring a Clinton victory, Trump won avid support among a core base of white non-college educated workers with his promise to be the "greatest jobs president that God ever created."

In his victory speech, he said he had a great economic plan, would embark on a project to rebuild American infrastructure and would double U.S. economic growth.

His win raises a host of questions for the United States at home and abroad. He campaigned on a pledge to take the country on a more isolationist, protectionist "America First" path. He has vowed to impose a 35 percent tariff on goods exported to the United States by U.S. companies that went abroad.

Trump, who at 70 will be the oldest first-term U.S. president, came out on top after a bitter and divisive campaign that focused largely on the character of the candidates and whether they could be trusted to serve as the country's 45th president.

The presidency will be Trump's first elected office, and it remains to be seen how he will work with Congress. During the campaign Trump was the target of sharp disapproval, not just from Democrats but from many in his own party.

STUNNED WORLD

Countries around the world reacted with stunned disbelief.

German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, an ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel, described the result as a "huge shock" and questioned whether it meant the end of "Pax Americana", the state of relative peace overseen by Washington that has governed international relations since World War Two.

Neighbor Mexico was pitched into deep uncertainty by the victory for Trump who has often accused it of stealing U.S. jobs and sending criminals across the border.

British Prime Minister Theresa May congratulated Trump and said the two countries would remain "strong and close partners on trade, security and defence."

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called on Washington to stay committed to last year's international nuclear deal with Iran, which Trump has threatened to rip up.

Trump's national security ideas have simultaneously included promises to build up the U.S. military while at the same time avoiding foreign military entanglements.

He wants to rewrite international trade deals to reduce trade deficits and has taken positions that raise the possibility of damaging relations with America's most trusted allies in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Trump has promised to warm relations with Russia that have chilled under President Barack Obama over Russian President Vladimir Putin's intervention in the Syrian civil war and his seizure of Ukraine's Crimea region.

Putin sent Trump a congratulatory note on Wednesday, saying he hoped that they can get the U.S.-Russian relationship out of crisis.

CLINTON'S WEAKNESSES

Trump entered the race 17 months ago and survived a series of seemingly crippling blows, many of them self-inflicted, including the emergence in October of a 2005 video in which he boasted about making unwanted sexual advances on women.

He apologized but within days, several women emerged to say he had groped them, allegations he denied. He was judged the loser of all three presidential debates with Clinton.

A Reuters/Ipsos national Election Day poll offered some clues to the outcome. It found Clinton underperformed expectations with women, winning their vote by only about 7 percent, similar to Obama when he won re-election in 2012.

And while she won Hispanics, black and millennial voters, Clinton did not win those groups by greater margins than Obama did in 2012. Younger blacks did not support Clinton like they did Obama, as she won eight of 10 black voters between the ages of 35 and 54. Obama won almost 100 percent of those voters in 2012.

During the campaign, Trump said he would "make America great again" through the force of his personality, negotiating skill and business acumen. He proposed refusing entry to the United States of people from war-torn Middle Eastern countries, a modified version of an earlier proposed ban on Muslims.

His volatile nature, frequent insults and unorthodox proposals led to campaign feuds with a long list of people, including Muslims, the disabled, Republican U.S. Senator John McCain, Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, the family of a slain Muslim-American soldier, a Miss Universe winner and a federal judge of Mexican heritage.

A largely anti-Trump crowd of about 400 to 500 people gathered outside the White House after his victory, many visibly in shock or tears. Some carried signs that read "stand up to racism" and "love trumps hate."

The election was unprecedented in the way it turned Americans against each other, according to dozens of interviews in rural United States and across some of the most politically charged battleground states.

Throughout his campaign - and especially in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in July - Trump described a dark America that had been knocked to its knees by China, Mexico, Russia.

The American dream was dead, he said, smothered by malevolent business interests and corrupt politicians, and he alone could revive it.

He has vowed to win economic concessions from China and to build a wall on the southern U.S. border with Mexico to keep out undocumented immigrants.

As financial markets absorbed the prospect of Trump's win,  the Mexican peso plunged to its lowest-ever levels. The peso had become a touchstone for sentiment on the election as Trump threatened to rip up a free trade agreement with Mexico.

His triumph was a rebuke to Obama, a Democrat who spent weeks flying around the country to campaign against him, repeatedly casting doubt on his suitability for the White House.

Obama will hand over the office to Trump after serving the maximum eight years allowed by law.

Trump promises to push Congress to repeal Obama's troubled healthcare plan and to reverse his Clean Power Plan. He plans to create jobs by relying on U.S. fossil fuels such as oil and gas.

CLINTON'S FAILED SECOND BID

Trump's victory marked a frustrating end to the presidential aspirations of Clinton, 69, who failed for the second time to be elected the first woman U.S. president.

In a posting on Twitter during Tuesday evening, she  acknowledged a battle that was unexpectedly tight given her edge in opinion polls going into Election Day.

"This team has so much to be proud of. Whatever happens tonight, thank you for everything," she tweeted.

The wife of former President Bill Clinton, she held a steady lead in many opinion polls for months.

Voters perceived in her a cautious and calculating candidate and an inability to personally connect with them.

Even though the FBI found no grounds for criminal charges after a probe into her use of a private email server rather than a government system while she was secretary of state, the issue allowed critics to raise doubts about her integrity. Hacked emails also showed a cozy relationship between her State Department and donors to her family's Clinton Foundation charity.

Trump seized on the emails to charge that Clinton represented a corrupt political system in Washington that had to be swept clean.

Trump poised to win US Presidential elections in shock results for Hillary supporters

Billionaire populist Donald Trump, tapping into an electorate fed up with Washington insiders, was on the verge of a shock victory Wednesday over Hillary Clinton in a historic US presidential election that sent world markets into meltdown.

State-by-state, one-by-one, the 70-year-old maverick Republican tycoon racked up victories in defiance of the forecasts of pundits and pollsters, before arriving within striking distance of the White House.

Key races in Michigan and Pennsylvania remained to be called at 0630 GMT, but the 69-year-old Democrat's supporters were in a state of shock and the markets did not wait for a concession speech to react.

US futures markets fell five percent in after-hours trading, mirrored by falls in London and Tokyo as the news broke that the world's greatest economy could soon be in the hands of an untested protectionist.

The dollar tumbled against the yen and the Mexican peso slumped to a historic low against even the weaker greenback, on concerns that Trump might make good on his vow to build a wall on the US border.

In New York, it was a tale of two poll-watching parties - as Trump's supporters whooped it up in anticipation of a victory for his populist campaign, Clinton's camp succumbed to silent, stunned grief.

"It's unbelievable. I didn't know Trump was really going to pull it off," said Glenn Ruti, a New Yorker who works in telecommunications.

"I think he's going to go all the way. The country wants change."

Attendees at Trump's victory party at a Midtown hotel began chanting "Call it, call it!"

In America as a whole, it was a tale of two countries - as Trump's largely-white fan base celebrated a repudiation of free trade, open borders and diverse communities, liberals and minorities cringed.

"It's just unbelievable," said 51-year-old Anabel Evora, who works for a non-profit and flew into New York as a supporter of Clinton's historic bid to be America's first woman president.

"I am praying, and I am not religious," she told AFP. "I am sad. I'm about to cry."

At the Mexican-American bar Campeon in Manhattan's Union Square, the mood was one of disgust and apprehension.

"If Trump wins, I am going to throw up," said 27-year-old Amy Goldstein.

Trump's win, if confirmed, would halt Clinton's quest to reach the White House for at least another four years - and instead confer the title of president on a man who has been accused by a dozen women of sexual assault and misconduct.

"He's so un-American. We're outraged. It's shocking. Racism, stereotyping by religion and sex," said Kate Kalmyka, a 36-year-old lawyer.

'Drain the swamp'

At the bar in the soaring Trump Tower, the Republican's home base and headquarters, a well-heeled crowd cheered and chanted "Drain the swamp" - Trump's anti-corruption slogan.

"Without a strong United States of America, the rest of the world is in trouble," declared Rina Corey.

"We were saved once by Ronald Reagan and I think Donald Trump is in the same path. He's a citizen and not a politician. We need him desperately."

In the Florida city of Miami, Cuban Americans - traditionally strongly pro-Republican - honked their horns and cheered as they gathered at the iconic Cafe Versailles in Little Havana.

"We didn't like the fact that the country was leaning socialist, we lost many jobs," said 45-year-old Miguel Alejandro.

"This isn't the country I found in 1993 when I arrived by raft, when they received us with great excitement."

As of 0630 GMT Wednesday, Trump had won at least 25 states and 245 electoral college votes, just short of the 270 he needed, and had narrow leads in partial counts in Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Both these states were won by incumbent president Barack Obama when he was elected in 2008 and re-elected 2012 as America's first black president, and pollsters had expected Clinton to keep them.

But an apparent collapse in Democratic support among white voters - not fully compensated for by increased Latino turnout - appeared to have doomed Clinton in blue-collar areas of America's Rust Belt.

'Whatever happens, thank you'

On the legislative side, the Republicans were on course to retain their majority in the US House of Representatives, according to network projections.

Clinton and her husband former president Bill Clinton were holed up in their hotel, but she tweeted: "This team has so much to be proud of. Whatever happens tonight, thank you for everything."

Trump cast his ballot alongside his wife Melania in a Manhattan school gymnasium.

"Right now it's looking very good," he told reporters - paying no heed to protesters who welcomed him with chants of "New York hates you!"

The 2016 race was the most bruising in modern memory.

Obama's election in 2008 had raised hopes of uniting Americans.

But the current contest has only highlighted the country's divisions - and the fact that voters are not necessarily happy with their options.

Exit polls by ABC News and NBC News found that both Clinton and Trump are seen as untrustworthy by majorities of voters, while most find Trump's temperament unpresidential.

Republican billionaire Donald Trump added key battleground states Florida and North Carolina to his haul of state wins in the race for the White House, US television networks projected - dealing a crushing blow to rival Hillary Clinton.

Winning one or both of the southern US states was seen as critical to both candidates, but Trump needed Florida - the Sunshine State - to have a viable path to the magic number of 270 electoral college votes.

Clinton wins western state of Nevada

Democrat Hillary Clinton kept alive her hopes of being elected president, winning the western state of Nevada, US networks projected on Tuesday.

Nevada has six Electoral College votes, allowing Clinton to make up a little of her deficit to Republican Donald Trump, who has a substantial lead.

The first candidate to 270 Electoral College votes wins the White House.

Trump within reach of shock White House win

Billionaire populist Donald Trump was poised for a possible shock victory over Hillary Clinton in Tuesday's historic US presidential election, as a string of swing state victories for the Republican jolted world markets and stunned her supporters.

As polls closed and media called state races one-by-one, giving the key battleground states of Ohio, Florida and North Carolina to the Republican maverick, pollsters scrambled to update their forecasts and point to an improbable upset.

Clinton - the 69-year-old Democratic former first lady, senator and secretary of state - began the day as the narrow favorite to win the White House and become America's first female president.

But Trump's string of successes reflected how deeply divided the American electorate has become, and showcased his ability to tap into white blue-collar voters' resentment of cultural change linked to immigration and the loss of manufacturing jobs at home.

World markets plunged as US observers awaited results from the Rust Belt state of Pennsylvania, the northeastern state of New Hampshire, and the northern states of Michigan and Wisconsin - all now vital to Clinton's hopes.

Mexico's peso plummeted over fears that Trump will make good on his vow to wall off America's neighbor to the south.

Safe haven assets rallied, with the yen and gold rushing higher, and Wall Street futures fell 3.7 percent in after-hours trade. Asian markets were in turmoil, with Indian stocks dropping six percent.

Clinton supporters who had gathered at a glittering reception in New York expecting to hear a victory speech from Clinton fell quiet and jabbed nervously at their phones.

Major donors had tears in their eyes as they stared stupefied at the screens, and an audible gasp filled the room when North Carolina went into Trump's win column.

"Not great," muttered railroad retiree Joan Divenuti, who came all the way from Massachusetts to cheer her heroine. "Florida was always a problem," she added.

Across town at the Trump election party, the 70-year-old property tycoon's supporters - a more well-heeled crowd than the blue-collar Midwesterners he is counting on for victory - cheered and pumped their fists at each advance.

"I think we're going to win," said 22-year-old Brendon Pena, who works for a company that leases office space in the soaring Trump Tower.

"I was always positive. I think Donald Trump is a really smart guy. He knows what we're going to do and we're going to win the election."

At 11:30 pm (0430 GMT), Trump was projected to win 24 states worth 229 electoral college votes, within striking distance of the 270 he needs.

Clinton stood at a projected 209 electoral votes.

'Whatever happens, thank you'

On the legislative side, the Republicans were on course to retain their majority in the US House of Representatives, according to network projections - a situation that has been a thorn in the side of incumbent President Barack Obama.

Clinton tweeted: "This team has so much to be proud of. Whatever happens tonight, thank you for everything."

She and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, huddled in a hotel near the venue to prepare a victory - or concession - speech.

Earlier, the Clintons voted near their home in Chappaqua, before emerging to shake hands and chat with the crowd.

An exit poll by CNN found that only four in 10 voters were optimistic that Obama's successor would do any better than he has during his two terms in office.

Trump, 70, cast his ballot alongside his wife Melania in a Manhattan school gymnasium.

"Right now it's looking very good," he told reporters - paying no heed to protesters who welcomed him with chants of "New York hates you!"

Tough contest

The 2016 race was the most bruising in modern memory.

Obama's election eight years ago as the nation's first black president had raised hopes of uniting Americans, but the current contest has only highlighted the country's divisions - and the fact that voters are not necessarily happy with their options.

Exit polls by ABC News and NBC News found that both Clinton and Trump are seen as untrustworthy by majorities of voters, while most find Trump's temperament unpresidential.

But his supporters flocked to the polls.

"It's unbelievable. I didn't know Trump was really going to pull it off," said Glenn Ruti, a New Yorker who works in telecommunications.

"I think he's going to go all the way. The country wants change."

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