How Donald Trump won the election

By THE DATA TEAM

IT IS the biggest political upset in living memory. On the night of November 8th 2016 America decided that Donald Trump would be its 45th president. The vote stunned pollsters and pundits, who had reckoned that Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival, would breeze to victory.

The tables started to turn on Mrs Clinton’s campaign around 9pm eastern time (2am GMT) as county-level results trickled in, with Mr Trump outperforming his polls in key states like Florida, North Carolina and Virginia. Over the next few hours, as more and more counties were marked as red, news organisations frantically updated their predictions to favour Mr Trump. As Mrs Clinton’s chances to win tumbled, so too did the financial markets. The value of the Mexican peso dropped 10% against the dollar. At 10:50pm eastern time Associated Press, a newswire, declared that the Republican candidate had won the vital swing state of Florida. From there Mr Trump’s victory became ever more likely.