People in the crowd at Hillary Clinton’s 2016 US presidential Election Night event watch results begin to come in on a big screen at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York, New York. Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA
People in the crowd at Hillary Clinton’s 2016 US presidential Election Night event watch results begin to come in on a big screen at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York, New York. Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA
It’s all over bar the final counting: Donald Trump is the 45th president of the United States, after mounting one of the most unprecedented and divisive campaigns in the 240 year history of America.
Glass ceiling status: Intact.
An outline of the US-shaped stage is reflected in the ceiling at the Javits center. Photograph: Andrew Gombert/EPA
Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton concludes one of the most bitter political contest the country has ever experienced – one marked by a deep mistrust of both candidates, two visions for America separated by a vast gulf, and resurgent strains of racism, sexism and Islamophobia.
This is the divided country that faces Trump as he steps into the presidency. Clinton is still, perhaps, projected to win the popular vote.
But with Republicans retaining control of the Senate and the House, Trump is well-positioned to act upon the promises that were the focal point of his campaign. A crackdown on immigration into the United States. A wall that spans the entirety of the US border with Mexico. A focus on white working-class regions of the country, conservative nominees to the supreme court, and a protectionist trade stance. And a combative position on the world stage, including a belligerent relationship with many longtime foreign allies.
On that note, we are closing the Glass Ceiling Watch blog.
Click here for more updates on our rolling live blog.
Catherine Cortez Masto has been declared the winner of the Senate race in Nevada by the AP. She will be the first woman to represent the state in the US Senate and the chamber’s first Latina.
Over at FiveThirtyEight, Clare Malone has an early breakdown of how white people voted based on their gender and their education. Of note:
College-educated white women voted for Clinton 51 percent to 45 percent, but non-college-educated white women voted for Trump 62 percent to 34 percent. That difference is nothing but stark and something we saw inklings of in October, when I wrote about how many Republican women were willing to overlook Trump’s history of sexual harassment allegations and derogatory comments about women. Partisanship is a hell of a drug.
Kamala Harris has been named the winner of the Senate race in California. She will be the fourth woman of color to serve in the US Senate, joining Illinois’ Tammy Duckworth, who won her race earlier tonight.
Until tonight, only two women of color had ever been elected to the US Senate: Carol Moseley Braun, from Illinois, and Mazie Hirono, who still serves the state of Hawaii as Senator today.
‘I want to ask Nate Silver why his methodology is so flawed’
I started the evening at an election watch party where the mood was jubilant; people were celebrating; Clinton was definitely going to win. A couple of hours later, things have swung steadily in Trump’s direction. I’m at a different watch party, at the Wing, an upscale women’s member club in Manhattan; it’s starting to feel less like a party and more like group therapy. Many of the well dressed women here seem to be in the process of biting their nails off.
Audrey Gelman and Lauren Kassan Photograph: Arwa Mahdawi/The Guardian
“I don’t think I can eat or drink anything,” says one woman, flustered, standing in front of a slick bar covered in pizza slices and bottles of wine. “I’m too nervous.”
“I want to ask Nate Silver, whose website I’ve been checking religiously, why his methodology is so flawed,” Audrey Gelman, co-founder of The Wing tells me. There’s a collective sense of incredulity, almost anger, that the polls were so wrong.
Gelman says she’s “frightened” by the prospect of a Trump presidency, particularly considering the disturbing “levels of vitriol and misogyny in this campaign.” Still, she says, she’s comforted by the fact that she’s in this space, “surrounded by hundreds of women.”
Inside The Wing Photograph: The Guardian
If Hillary loses will it set women’s rights back? I ask Lauren Kassan, co-founder of the Wing. Kassan doesn’t think so; “women are going to come together more than ever and it’s why [women-only] spaces like this are even more important.”
The Virginia call comes in and, shortly after, it’s announced that Clinton is still projected to win. A big cheer goes up. You can practically feel the tension break. The volume in the room goes up. People start eating the pizza again. No one is getting too comfortable though. It’s very clear that if tonight ends in a victory for Hillary it’s going to have been a lot closer than anyone predicted.
Results update: At this stage in the evening, our politics team is reporting that Clinton needs at least Michigan or Wisconsin to make it through, and she quite likely needs both. They’re counting hard now in the upper Midwest.
Obama won Michigan by 9.5% in 2012. He won Wisconsin by 6.7%. No such margins for Clinton tonight.
Here’s how hard it is to become president when you’re a (fictional) woman
Turns out it’s pretty unusual for a woman to be president of the United States in the fictional world, too. There are only a handful of examples, and most of them involve exceptional circumstances.
The most common reason in fiction a woman becomes president? The men have died. Here are a few standouts:
Mars Attacks!
When this 1996 space invasion movie opens, Taffy, played by a 14-year-old Natalie Portman, is the president’s teenage daughter. Then, Mars attacks. By the time Earth defeats the aliens, the entire federal government is dead, and Taffy appears to be the president. Which, sure. That’s totally how that works.
Commander in Chief
In this short-lived ABC series, America got its first female president when the sitting president, a dude, died of an aneurysm. Geena Davis played Vice President-turned-President Mackenzie Allen.
Battlestar Galactica
“The most common reason in fiction a woman becomes president? The men have died.” Photograph: Allstar/SCI-FI CHANNEL
On a planet that looks a lot like Earth, in a country that seems a lot like the United States, Education Secretary Laura Roslin becomes president after an artificially intelligent species from outer space launches a surprise attack on humanity. (OK, so our worlds are slightly different.)
The attack kills off all but a few hundred humans, and Roslin, one of the few survivors from civilian government, becomes our first female space president.
Y: The Last Man
Sometimes, every man on the planet has to die before a woman can become the president of the United States. You know how it is.
In this dystopian comic series by Brian K. Vaughan, Agriculture Secretary Margaret Valentine becomes the president after a mysterious force kills off almost every human with a Y-chromosome. The scourge places Valentine next in line for succession. Later in the series, Valentine wins reelection because Oprah wasn’t available. (Really.)
Honorable mention: Air Force One
When Russian terrorists seize control the president’s plane and hold his family hostage, you would expect the vice president to take the wheel. Just for a few hours, so Harrison Ford has the space he needs to body-slam those terrorists off his plane.
But in Air Force One, when members of the government urge Vice President Glenn Close to declare the president – WHO IS A HOSTAGE – unable to perform his duties, she refuses.
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