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Listent to this Larry King interview with Donald Trump way back in 1987. Bereft of all the persnality undertones, his message eerily consistent.

While votes are still being counted, some high-profile ballot initiatives already have returned clear results — including a slew of states opting in favor of medical or recreational marijuana, and several more raising the minimum wage. You can see our full list of key ballot measures here, or check out a sample of the highlights. Legalizing marijuana, either medicinally or recreationally. In short, Florida, Arkansas and North Dakota legalized (or greatly expanded legal access to) medical marijuana, while Massachusetts, Nevada and California legalized recreational marijuana. Raising the minimum wage: Maine, Arizona, Colorado and Washington all voted to increase the minimum wage to at least $12 an hour by 2020. Washington approved a raise to $13.50 an hour by 2020; Colorado calls for $12 by 2020, but with the wage pegged to the cost of living after that. In South Dakota, a ballot initiative called for lowering the minimum wage for non-tipped employees under 18, but it was roundly rejected by voters, with more than 70 percent opposing it. Death penalty: Oklahoma and Nebraska both voted in favor of the death penalty. In Oklahoma, a referendum declared that the death penalty is not considered cruel and unusual punishment in the state; in Nebraska, voters opted to overturn a bill that eliminated the death penalty. We're still waiting for results on California's two competing death penalty initiatives; one would end the death penalty and the other speed up the process. Strengthening gun control measures: In Washington, voters approved a firearms access measure. As we've previously reported, it would "allow people to get a court order that would temporarily ban people who show signs of mental illness or violence or another behavior that might indicate that they could harm themselves or others from possessing firearms."

Heads of state and world leaders have been congratulating Trump on his election victory, but with varying degrees of sincerity. The Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte, who has been outright hostile to both Barack Obama and to Trump, was respectful: Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, was equally respectful, despite how Trump has been openly sympathetic towards Brexit. Towards the end of his generally deferential letter, in which he called to “strengthen translatlantic relations,” Tusk invited Trump to a US-EU summit “at your earliest convenience.” In other words, we need to talk, now. European far right leaders, in stark contrast to Tusk, were jubilant. Sinaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong directly compared Trump’s victory to Brexit, noting that it “reflects deep frustration with the way things are, and a strong wish to reassert a sense of identity…” His message, while neutral, contains an air of resignation—perhaps reflecting a preference for Hillary Clinton, whose held a more predictable stance towards China and intervention in the South China Sea. Other world leaders showed less neutrality in their remarks. France’s Francois Hollande congratulated Trump on his victory, while adding that his upcoming presidency “now opens a period of uncertainty.” This marks a relative contrast from his comments in August, when he said Trump’s comments about Muslims made him “want to retch.” Sweden’s Stefan Löfven didn’t even mention Trump’s name in his statement. The prime minister has previously criticized his presidential bid, calling it “based on fear and division. Hate, I would almost say, or at least antipathy.” His note after Trump’s victory can barely be called congratulatory: This is an election outcome that many people feel concerned about but that we have prepared for. Sweden has a long tradition of cooperation with US governments, regardless of party political affiliations, and the Swedish Government will contact the administration that takes office at an early stage to safeguard Swedish and European interests, and to promote global security and stability. Germany’s Angela Merkel was even more direct. She said that the election “inflicted deep wounds that will not be easy to close,” and hinted at a growing division (link in German) between the United States and Europe: Trump has found in the course of the election campaign critical words not only to Europe but also to Germany. I think we have to face it that American foreign policy will be less predictable for us, and we must be sure that America will be inclined more often to decide alone. She began the closing of her speech on a dour note: “I don’t want to sugarcoat anything. Nothing is easier, much will be difficult.” South Korea perhaps had the most telling response to Trump’s victory. Around the time the office of president Park Geun-hye sent Trump a congratulatory note, its National Security Council convened for an emergency session. It’s possible it’s not the only country to do so

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton finds herself on the wrong end of an electoral split, moving ahead in the popular vote but losing to President-elect Donald Trump in the electoral college, according to the latest numbers emerging Wednesday. As of 7:20 a.m. ET, Clinton had amassed 59,059,121 votes nationally, to Trump's 58,935,231 — a margin of 123,890 that puts Clinton on track to become the fifth U.S. presidential candidate to win the popular vote but lose the election. "Trump crossed the 270 electoral vote threshold at 2:31 a.m. ET with a victory in Wisconsin," NPR's Carrie Johnson reports. If the final tally follows the current trend, the result would mark the second time in the past 16 years that a Democrat has lost a national election while winning the popular vote. In 2000, Al Gore narrowly won the popular vote against George Bush, but he lost the presidency by five electoral votes in a hotly contested result. Because of how the electoral college works, it's theoretically possible for a candidate to win the White House with less than 30 percent of the popular vote, as NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben recently reported. Discussing the 2000 election, Danielle noted that despite the split outcome, that race "also has the electoral-vote margin that most closely reflects the popular-vote margin." Danielle added, "In that sense, one could call it one of the 'fairest' elections in modern politics."

On the first anniversary of the start of his presidential campaign, Donald Trump spent much of the day in a setting he knows well — a room full of high-priced lawyers battling out a civil lawsuit. Trump paused his campaigning June 16 to answer questions under oath in one of his lawsuits against two celebrity chefs. He had sued Geoffrey Zakarian and José Andrésafter they backed out of a restaurant deal in response to Trump’s inflammatory statements about Mexican immigrants. The two-hour deposition was at least the third time Trump had to leave the campaign trail to be deposed by attorneys in one of his organization’s many lawsuits. Just two weeks before Election Day, at least 75 of the 4,000-plus lawsuits involving Trump and his businesses remain open, according to an ongoing, nationwide analysis of state and federal court records by USA TODAY. Trump is running well behind Democrat Hillary Clinton in most polls — about 5 points behind in the popular vote inRealClearPolitics' rolling average of national polls. But if Trump were to win, the number of unresolved cases is unprecedented for a presidential candidate, according to political scientists and historians. Trump faces significant open litigation tied to his businesses: angry members at his Jupiter, Fla. golf course say they were cheated out of refunds on their dues and a former employee at the same club claims she was fired after reporting sexual harassment. There’s a fraud case brought byTrump University students who say the mogul’s company ripped them off for tens of thousands in tuition for a sham real estate course. Trump is also defending lawsuits tied to his campaign. A disgruntled GOP political consultant sued for $4 million saying Trump defamed her. Another suit, a class action, says the campaign violated consumer protection laws by sending unsolicited text messages. If elected, the open lawsuits will tag along with Trump. He would not be entitled to immunity, and could be required to give depositions or even testify in open court. That could chew up time and expose a litany of uncomfortable private and business dealings to the public. One Trump case, over non-payment of tips to caterers at Trump SoHo Hotel in New York City, is scheduled to go to trial a week before Election Day. Even in the waning days of the campaign, in a speech Saturday in Gettysburg outlining his first actions if he wins the White House, Trump threatened to sue all of the women who’ve accused him of unwanted sexual advances, saying all of them are lying.

Well, folks, this should be the end of industrial political polling as we know it. Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump began his tilt at the presidency as an outlier, and even as recently as voting day was characterised by many pollsters as the likely loser by a long shot. Now he is the US president elect, an outcome that most mainstream observers regard as an astonishing upset. Comparisons with the Brexit surprise abound. The result underscores how badly modern polls serve us. Polling is an enormous, lucrative and influential industry–Australia has lost sitting prime ministers over poll results. But the US election outcome shows how unreliable polls can they be at predicting our political futures. Many pollsters are now eating humble pie. Sam Wang, the widely-lauded pollster behind the Princeton Election Consortium website, was only recently so confident of a Clinton win that he tweeted: As the votes for Trump rolled in, Wang wrote that he’s getting ready for “bug-cookery”, saying that “the polls were off, massively”. In the late hours of voting day in the US, Wang wrote: The entire polling industry – public, campaign-associated, aggregators – ended up with data that missed tonight’s results by a very large margin. There is now the question of understanding how a mature industry could have gone so wrong. And of course, most of all, there is the shock of a likely Trump presidency. I apologize that I underestimated the possibility of such an event. Nate Silver, who uses statistical analysis to crunch poll data on the website FiveThirtyEight and famously called the outcome of the 2012 election correctly, was less confident than Wang of a Clinton presidency. But FiveThirtyEight did tip Clinton as the likely winner: Nate Silver seemed to grow reflective as the results became obvious on the evening of voting day: In the space of a few hours, GOP pollster Frank Luntz went from predicting a Clinton win to declaring Trump the likely next president: He wrote on Twitter that exit polling margins “were way off”. Polling used to be a lot easier. Polling emerged for sound economic and political reasons. On the economic side, advertisers needed a trusted way of reading the customer mind, so they could design products and develop media plans to sell them. On the political side, legislators, political candidates and planners needed reliable means of reading the citizen mind, not only for elections but also for everyday policy affairs from welfare to housing provision. Not surprisingly, early polling methodology experts understood that devious people or organisations might attempt to distort the outcomes of ratings and polls. In advertising, companies that subscribed to ratings and actively tried to distort them would be threatened with removal from the subscription and banned from accessing ratings.

One of the most interesting experiments in economics is known as the ultimatum game. It deftly gets at a fundamental truth of human nature?—?about how our deep emotional programming cause us to do things that, when viewed through the lens of rationality, just don’t make sense. The game itself involves two players. The first player receives a sum of money, and gets to propose how to divide it between the two players. The second player can do only one thing: accept or reject the proposal. If the second player accepts, then the money is divided between the two players as proposed. But if the second player rejects the proposal, then neither player gets anything. Approaching the game from a rational economic perspective, the second player should accept any proposal that involves an offer of anything?—?because the alternative, of course, is to receive nothing. But that’s where things get interesting. It’s not how people behave at all. Instead, research shows that we reject offers we consider unfair. Although this varies depending on culture and other factors (there’s even been a version of this research played where both participants were intoxicated), this general trend holds true. Of all the explanations for this behavior, it’s the neurological ones that are most interesting. One experiment placed participants in an MRI imaging machine while they were playing. Offers perceived as stingy light up the anterior insular cortex, a region associated with disgust. In other words?—?when it comes to dividing the pie, we don’t behave rationally. We behave emotionally. This is instructive in explaining Brexit and Trump. There’s been disbelief at the outcomes in both the UK and the US: “How could people vote to burn the house down?! How could they be so stupid?!” These reactions seem to miss something very fundamental about what’s happening here. Policies such as trade, globalization and immigration have all been proven to be of great global economic benefit. Look at the impact they have had on global poverty: The rise of China tracks closely to the above chart; and it shows just how much trade and globalization has done to lift billions out of poverty. But while China and the developing world have benefited enormously from trade, so too has the developed world. The benefits of comparative advantage are real. But the question then becomes: for every extra dollar that has accrued to the US and the UK, who has been the beneficiary? Here’s a hint: it’s not the people who are voting for Trump and Brexit. These folks don’t care about the chart above, or what it represents as an accomplishment for humanity. The first player consists of those people inside the US and UK who have benefitted from globalization and trade: the “elites”, derisively referred to as “the 1%”. And the second player? That’s everyone inside the United States and the United Kingdom who aren’t in those upper income echelons. They’re all the lines in the second chart that aren’t going up. These folks are seeing the pile of money in the game growing ever bigger. And they’re also watching on, as the other player keeps an ever-larger share of that pile for themselves. Now, it’s tempting to adopt a humanist argument: that it’s OK to sacrifice these folks for the greater good. You see this argument all the time: that what is happening in the first chart makes what is happening in the second chart acceptable. That dragging China and the world out of poverty makes it OK for America’s middle class to suffer.

In the run-up to Election Day, most discussion of demographics emphasized growing turnout among Latino voters and hand-wringing over whether Democrats could turn out black voters. But by early Wednesday, white voters’ resounding support for Donald Trump — including a majority of white women — was the clearest trend at the voting booth. That’s according to the results of Edison Research’s national election poll, which was collected from a sample of 24,537 respondents at 350 polling places. The exit poll isn’t perfect — in part because it relies on human survey-takers at pre-selected precincts. In 2012, for example, it significantly oversampled black voters. And little under one-fifth of the respondents to the poll were early and absentee voters this year, when early voting turnout is expected to record an unprecedented share. We’ll eventually get more rigorous data on who voted and how from the Census Bureau. But the exit poll does offer some early insights into the demographics of the electorate. Based on this data, across the board, white people of nearly all ages, genders, and education levels chose Trump. The only exception: college-educated white women. Whites vs. nonwhite voters Whites made up 70 percent of voters 58 percent of all whites voted for Trump 21 percent of nonwhites voted for Trump White men White men made up 34 percent of voters 63 percent of them voted Trump 31 percent voted Clinton White women White women made up 37 percent of voters 53 percent of them voted Trump 43 percent voted Clinton Young whites (ages 18-29) Young white people made up 12 percent of voters 48 percent of them voted Trump 43 percent voted Clinton In comparison, 9 percent of young blacks and 24 percent of young Latinos voted for Trump. College-educated whites White college graduates made up 37 percent of voters 49 percent of them voted for Trump, while 45 percent voted for Clinton. 54 percent of college-educated white men voted Trump. 45 percent of college-educated white women chose Trump, while 51 percent chose Clinton. This is the only white demographic tracked by the exit poll that Trump didn’t win. Non-college-educated whites Whites without a college degree made up 34 percent of voters 67 percent of them voted for Trump Of them, women voted 62 percent for Trump And men voted 72 percent for Trump

For a minute there, it did really look like history was in the making. The polls and the mood seemed aligned. The election night party Hillary Clinton had planned at the glass-ceilinged Jacob K. Javits convention center in New York City was filled with women—mothers and grandmothers and little girls wearing campaign logo pins. There were grounds to believe that America could and would elect a woman to its highest office, especially when the choice was so easy: On the one side, the single most qualified candidate in recent memory, perhaps in all of US history; on the other, an almost unpresentable contestant, with such a profound lack of decency and respect—for women, for minorities, for people with disabilities, you name it. Surely, this was a no-brainer. And it should have been—it would have been—had Clinton been a man. Had she been a man, there would have been no questions about her likability. Had she been a man, the scrutiny of the many years of her public service would have focused on her outstanding list of accomplishments, and not focused on the things she got wrong. But America would rather have a president who calls its women pigs than elect a woman themselves. It would rather vote for a man who brags about sexual assault and unapologetically objectifies other people, rather than vote for a woman who has spent her life trying to convince her country, and the world, that “women’s rights are human rights.” And so, there was no big feminist party for the women who had hoped tonight would be their night. No party for years to come, but instead a rude awakening: This election wasn’t lost to the men in their country; it was lost—and this is where it hurts the most—to the women, too. Women all over America voted for Trump in enough numbers to see him to victory. In doing so, they have condoned everything that Trump stands for, and have absolved a sexist society (and a xenophobic, homophobic one) of its ills. They have shown that they have, if not a lack of respect of their own rights, then a sense that their own rights are not their most important priority. Never mind the feminist excitement, the enthusiastic voting in pantsuits, the stickers on Susan B. Anthony’s tomb. The possibility of a female US president was never all that close. It now it will be at least four more years before America can prove it again.

Once, not too many weeks ago, US Democrats were reasonably confident they would hold the White House, take control of the Senate, and, if everything broke right, win back the House of Representatives for the first time in a decade. Now the presidency and both houses of Congress are controlled by Republicans, and Democrats will again be forced to play defense, as they did for most of George W. Bush’s administration. High among their concerns will be trying to block Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee (and hoping he only has one court seat to fill). They’ll also need to fight a rollback of Obamacare and a defunding of social programs. Wining back the House was always a long shot for the Democrats, but many polls put the Senate in reach. Democrats did gain one seat, when Iraq war veteran Tammy Duckworth beat incumbent Mark Kirk, but other breakthroughs failed to materialize. Republican incumbent Kelly Ayotte, thought to be among the most vulnerable senators, fended off Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire; Evan Bayh, a former Democratic senator, couldn’t reclaim an Indiana seat, losing to Todd Young; and former Wisconsin senator Russ Feingold also failed to stage a comeback, losing to Republican Ron Johnson in a rematch of their 2010 race. Elsewhere, incumbent Richard Burr comfortably beat Deborah Ross in North Carolina, and Marco Rubio, who announced his retirement from politics after dropping out of the Republican primary, retained his Florida senate seat. In other races of note, Republican John McCain reclaimed his Arizona seat and in New York, Democrat Chuck Schumer easily won reelection, making him the new minority leader following the retirement of Harry Reid. Catherine Cortez Masto, a Nevada Democrat, became the first Latina senator and in a race between two Democratic women in California, which has open primaries, Kamala Harris beat Loretta Sanchez. Harris, who is of mixed race, is the first Indian-American and second African-American woman to serve in the Senate. While Republicans control the White House and Congress, that doesn’t mean they’ll be unified. Trump broke with his party on trade and he may face a fight with the business-friendly interests in Congress if he tries to impose tariffs, as he’s threatened. There may also be a clash over immigration if Trump proposes radical measures. He’ll also have to contend with Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, who was vocally critical of Trump and refused to campaign with him. The enmity between the two men is real, and whether they can form a partnership will be critical in enacting the GOP agenda.

President-elect Donald Trump does not have the traditional cadre of Washington insiders and donors to build out his Cabinet, but his transition team has spent the past several months quietly building a short list of industry titans and conservative activists who could comprise one of the more eclectic and controversial presidential cabinets in modern history. Trumpworld has started with a mandate to hire from the private sector whenever possible. That’s why the Trump campaign is seriously considering Forrest Lucas, the 74-year-old co-founder of oil products company Lucas Oil, as a top contender for Interior secretary, or donor and Goldman Sachs veteran Steven Mnuchin as Treasury secretary. He’s also expected to reward the band of surrogates who stood by him during the bruising presidential campaign including Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani and Chris Christie, all of whom are being considered for top posts. A handful of Republican politicians may also make the cut including Sen. Bob Corker for secretary of State or Sen. Jeff Sessions for secretary of Defense. Trump's divisive campaign may make it difficult for him to attract top talent, especially since so many politicians and wonks openly derided the president-elect over the past year. And Trump campaign officials have worried privately that they will have difficulty finding high-profile women to serve in his Cabinet, according to a person familiar with the campaign’s internal discussions, given Trump’s past comments about women. Still, two Trump transition officials said they’ve received an influx of phone calls and emails in recent weeks, as the polls tightened and a Trump White House seemed more within reach. So far, the Trump campaign and transition teams have been tight-lipped about their picks. (The Trump campaign has declined to confirm Cabinet speculation.) But here’s the buzz from POLITICO’s conversations with policy experts, lobbyists, academics, congressional staffers and people close to Trump. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a leading Trump supporter, is a candidate for the job, as is Republican Sen. Bob Corker (Tenn.), the current chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Corker has said he’d “strongly consider” serving as secretary of State. Trump is also eyeing former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton. Donald Trump himself has indicated that he wants to give the Treasury secretary job to his finance chairman, Steven Mnuchin, a 17-year-veteran of Goldman Sachs who now works as the chairman and chief executive of the private investment firm, Dune Capital Management. Mnuchin has also worked for OneWest Bank, which was later sold to CIT Group in 2015. Among the Republican defense officials who could join the Trump administration: Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a close adviser, has been discussed as a potential Defense Secretary. Former National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and former Sen. Jim Talent (R-Mo.) have also been mentioned as potential candidates. Top Trump confidante retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, would need a waiver from Congress to become defense secretary, as the law requires retired military officers to wait seven years before becoming the civilian leader of the Pentagon. But Trump’s chief military adviser is likely to wind up some senior administration post, potentially national security adviser. And other early endorsers like Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) could be in line for top posts as well. People close to Trump say former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, one of Trump’s leading public defenders, is the leading candidate for attorney general. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, another vocal Trump supporter and the head of the president-elect’s transition team, is also a contender for the job — though any role in the Cabinet for Christie could be threatened by the Bridgegate scandal. Another possibility: Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, though the controversy over Trump’s donation to Bondi could undercut her nomination. Forrest Lucas, the 74-year-old co-founder of oil products company Lucas Oil, is seen as a top contender for Interior Secretary. Trump’s presidential transition team is also eyeing venture capitalist Robert Grady, a George H. W. Bush White House official with ties to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. And Trump’s son, Donald Trump, Jr., is said to be interested in the job.

Donald Trump’s astonishing victory over a heavily-favored Hillary Clinton on Tuesday is the greatest upset in the modern history of American elections – convulsing the nation’s political order in ways so profound and disruptive its impact can’t even be guessed at. Donald Trump was too crass, too much of a brazen sexist, too much a blustery orange-maned joke, too ill-informed about the operations of a country he wanted to run, too much of a threat to markets and the security establishment – too pessimistic -- to ever win the White House. Underestimated at every turn, spurned by his own party, the reality-show star was able to defeat a better-funded better-organized Hillary Clinton by surfing a tsunami of working-class white rage that her army of numbers crunchers somehow missed. Hillary Clinton had fully expected to make history when her motorcade sped from Chappaqua to Manhattan, had planned fireworks to celebrate her being elected the first female president in the 240-year-history of the republic. Instead her legacy is one of tragedy, futility and squandered opportunities – proof that a conventional candidate can do practically everything by the numbers (win debates, raise the most cash, assemble the greatest data and voter outreach effort in history) and still fall to a movement impelled by raw emotion, not calculation. When you wake up on Wednesday morning the United States will be a different place. The markets will tank, but they will recover. World leaders will shudder, but they will adjust as they always do. Half of the country that viewed him as a dangerous demagogue, even a neo-fascist, before the election will wonder, probably for the first time in their lives, if their country is the same one they were born in. His tens of millions of inspired supporters will awake to a hopeful new dawn, content in having finally torn the rotten establishment they had long loathed, and wondering how he plans to make their America great again. And in about two months Donald John Trump – the man who has said he’s smarter than any of the men who will now be his generals – will be wrapping his fingers around the nation’s nuclear football. As a French diplomat said Tuesday, reflecting on Trump, the stunning Brexit vote and the rise of right-wing parties in Western Europe: “This is a world we do not know anymore.” Can he do anything to calm a divided, terrified country together? Will he try' There is real fear in many parts of the country tonight. Trump’s remarkable victory was gained by waging total war on his enemies, lukewarm allies, the “dishonest” media and the very idea that he had to be civil or respect the norms of American politics. Trump himself had trouble believing he could actually pull the thing off (an aide told CNN early Tuesday that he would need a “miracle” to win. So his final rallies had a screw-it quality, returning to a provocative pattern of his underdog days – calling out the “rigged game” he seemed certain to lose and goading his supporters into a state of fury that made dissenters and reporters feel endangered. There was a time, earlier in the campaign, when he refused to join his backers in chanting “Lock her up!” Toward the end, he was joining them in that chant. Democratic consultant Stephanie Cutter, who worked on President Obama’s 2012 campaign, described how many Clinton supporters feel: “He’s about rejecting immigrants, he’s about keeping your foot down on people, women.” Clinton, in her upbeat closing message had emphasized that she would be a president for all Americans, and would try to reach out to Trump’s voters; he never reciprocated and the demographic groups that backed her overwhelmingly rejected him with fewer than 7 percent of blacks backing his candidacy, under 25 percent of Latinos earning his vote and a gender gap that led women to support Clinton in 10 to 20 percent greater numbers. The question now is whether he will do anything meaningful to reach out to them – to assure Democrats, women, blacks and Hispanics that he views them as co-equal members of the American family. And will they believe him? Hillary Clinton is a footnote in history. As Tuesday night dragged into Wednesday morning, as the thousands of would-be revelers turned into marble-eyed mourners, some of the younger women in the crowd looked up at the roof of the joyless Javits Center, its glass ceiling very much intact.

When this race became a referendum on what it means to be an American, Hillary Clinton thought she had victory in her sights. But voters had a different idea than the wily veteran of over four decades of American political life. In far greater numbers than expected, voters rejected her in favor of Donald Trump, an erratic tycoon whose mean-spirited campaign attracted unprecedented criticism for a major-party nominee. In the end, Clinton’s fraught history—symbolized by the baroque investigations into her private e-mail server—overcame whatever advantages her centrist agenda, critiques of Trump’s outrages, and well-funded, professionally run campaign could give her. Soon after Pennsylvania’s 20 votes in the electoral college were called for Trump by the Associated Press early Wednesday (Nov. 9), it was clear the path for a Clinton victory had disappeared. Indeed, Trump’s bet that white voters would turn out and surprise the pundits seems correct: Rural white voters in states that Democrats were counting on turned out to deliver for Trump, while Clinton could not find the language to win them over. Fears that she had not campaigned hard enough to defend the Democratic firewall late in the race proved true, as Trump outperformed the polls to win a series of close victories in the midwestern states, in addition to taking the key swing states of Florida and North Carolina, where Clinton failed to do as well as president Barack Obama did in 2012. Trump owes his victory to the polarization of American politics—the final difference in the vote will likely be less than two percentage points. But enough voters ignored warnings about Trump’s threat to US democracy to propel a man who embodies some of America’s most deep-set historical vices to the presidency. Why? He promises a return to a fantastic past where the social and economic turmoil of the 21st century can be avoided. It does not seem likely he can deliver on those promises, but voters appear all too used to politicians who don’t keep their promises. White Americans heard Trump’s voice, not Clinton’s, and came out to make him president. Eight months ago, in Michigan, Clinton lost the Michigan Democratic primary, a surprise defeat that pollsters hadn’t been expecting and one that today seems even more telling. The victor was Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, an independent whose primary challenge would highlight Clinton’s electoral weaknesses among white voters. Before she became the standard bearer for a movement against Trump, Clinton’s campaign—a multimillion-dollar effort with the most talented operatives and innovative tech available—had a problem explaining what she stood for. Not in terms of the issues, where Clinton’s wonky record set the tone, but in terms of, “why her, why now?” The primary electorate was shaped by Democratic frustration with the Obama administration’s turn into deadlock. Voters were looking for something more strident than Obama’s incrementalist agenda. The rifts in the Democratic coalition that had been mostly subsumed during the past eight years broke to the surface, as the capital-loving wing of the party with its branches on Wall Street and in Menlo Park clashed with those to whom economic recovery came less swiftly: Students and young graduates with their accompanying debt loads, and middle-class workers confronting wage stagnation. Though Clinton carefully cultivated the influential progressive senator Elizabeth Warren to forestall her potential challenge from the left, Sanders was dead set on mounting what he thought of initially as a protest candidacy. He channeled American frustration with his endless criticisms of “the millionaire and billionaire class.” He called for major expansions of the US government to help students with their debt and workers get a fair shake. His unpolished presentation couldn’t have been more of a contrast with Clinton’s poise. Sanders made hay of Clinton’s retreat on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a landmark free trade agreement she had backed in theory while working for Obama but rejected after its full details were made a public. Even more so, he went after her as an ally of Wall Street whose judgement was compromised by her time among the US elite, giving paid speeches to bankers that she wouldn’t share with the public. Clinton, he said, was the establishment, and what was needed was a political revolution. Yet Sanders faced several limitations as a candidate. Despite his own history in the civil rights movement, he found it difficult to speak directly to minority voters’ concerns about racism. At a time when Black Lives Matter and police violence dominated the news, he was hampered by his overwhelming focus on economic disparities. While his rhetoric would improve over time, his inability to pull black voters from Clinton allowed her to dominate voting in southern states. And Sanders could never quite land a foreign policy critique against Clinton despite her fraught record as US secretary of state, in part because any criticisms of her would naturally reflect on the popular president she had served. Perhaps most notable, Sanders famously declined to make Clinton’s handling of the e-mail server she used for official and personal business during her tenure as secretary of state an issue early in the campaign. The server becoming public in 2015, during a series of obviously politicized Congressional investigations into the Benghazi attacks on US personnel in Libya. In June, an FBI investigation would determine that Clinton had not illegally mishandled classified material. Sanders, unable or unwilling to deploy the most telling arguments against Clinton, soon found himself in a losing position. Despite raising more money than her campaign for several months, he could not win over enough minorities or women to break Clinton’s growing lead in convention delegates. The Clinton team’s disciplined strategy—reflecting lessons learned during her loss to Obama in 2008—gave her a lead she would never relinquish until the final day of the race. By the time the primary cycle ended in June, she was the Democratic nominee. But critics and journalists alike, noting Clinton’s high unfavorable rating, would continue to wonder whether Sanders, a relative outsider who out-polled her with white men, could be a stronger nominee in an unsettled electorate.

US president-elect Donald Trump says he is not a great believer in man-made climate change and has vowed to “cancel” the Paris climate agreement (which he calls “bad for US business“). But climate scientists, watching a world heating up far faster than expected, have pinned their hopes for action to save the planet on the agreement. Hundreds of members of the National Academy of Sciences, the nation’s most prestigious scientific body, published an open letter to “the Republican nominee for President” arguing that withdrawing from the pact carried “severe and long-lasting consequences” for the future of human life on Earth. The globe is on a trajectory for catastrophic warming in the coming decades, and the US is the second largest contributor of greenhouse emissions, following only China. Trump will be moving into the White House in January 2017. Does that mean he can make good on his promise to negate the agreement reached at COP 21 last year? In a word, no. But Trump can try to cripple the 193-country agreement by pulling the US out of the commitment it made in Paris. That could doom any prospects the COP 21 plan had of denting global emissions. Trump’s main objection to the treaty—that it allows “foreign bureaucrats control over how much energy we use”—is false, according to one of its US lead negotiators Todd Stern, since no one country dictates another’s emission plans. Stern has also said a decision to pull out of the plan is “stunningly misguided,” since it’s the world’s primary accord to coordinate global action on climate—a matter not of ideology but of the survival of humankind. That doesn’t mean Trump won’t do it. There are three avenues, according to Climate Central, that the president-elect could take to scuttle the agreement: First, Trump can formally withdraw the US from the agreement within a year after it takes effect by abandoning a 1992 climate treaty. That could happen even without Congressional approval. This is the most aggressive option, and likely to provoke fierce international condemnation and domestic resistance. The second option is delaying until the end of his first term, and then removing the US under an existing provision in the pact. After joining the Paris pact, countries must wait at least three years before triggering the one-year withdrawal period, followed by an additional one-year wait. The Obama Administration filed paperwork with the UN in September indicating the US will join the Paris agreement. The final—and perhaps most likely—scenario is simply making no effort to enforce the rules or incentives necessary to reduce pollution in the US. For example, Trump has said he would like to eliminate the US Environmental Protection Agency, the agency responsible for regulating greenhouse gas pollution in the US. It’s still too early to say what, if any action, the Trump administration will take. But since foreign policy, and much of the US energy strategy, resides in power of the executive branch, the future of our climate may be decided by the next resident of the White House.

The results of the 2016 election will not be kind to Barack Obama’s legacy—especially with a Republican majority in both houses of Congress. Donald Trump has already promised to begin his term in office by gutting the executive orders that the Obama administration has used to bypass gridlock in Congress. Executive orders allow the president to make rules within the laws that Congress has established. Obama has used these orders to forestall deportation of the minor children of illegal immigrants; mandate wage increases for government contractors, institute rules regulating greenhouse emissions from power plants, and apply the Family Medical Leave Act to same-sex couples. All of these could, and likely will, be repealed with a stroke of Trump’s pen on his first day in office. Then there are international commitments, which the president has significant latitude to enforce or ignore. Obama signed on to several global deals committing the US to fight climate change, a phenomenon Trump regards as a hoax. He also signed a landmark nuclear non-proliferation deal with Iran that Trump has threatened to tear up, though it may be difficult for the US to pull out of it due to commitments key European allies made to enforce the deal. Then there’s the possibility that Trump spends part of his first year in the White House working on his project to reject free trade agreements; there, too, he is constrained by Congress, but still has wide latitude to retaliate against trade abuses by countries like China and Mexico; he could even launch a trade war by making good on promises to hike tariffs by 35% to 45%. Trump will also have opportunities to act on other regulatory issues. For example, net neutrality rules put in place by Obama’s Federal Communications Commission will likely be rolled back by Trump appointees, and a Trump Department of Justice is not likely to push hard to enforce the Voting Rights Act, a battle the Obama administration took on when some of its authorities expired. Then there’s the Supreme Court, which is currently deadlocked at 4-4 on partisan issues. But a newly appointed Trump Justice, confirmed by the Republican senate, could help overturn Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that protects a woman’s right to obtain an abortion. It could also ensure an expansive reading of the Second Amendment that forestalls any new restrictions on gun ownership. Now, we come to two of Obama’s major legislative accomplishments: the 2010 Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank financial reform act. Republican lawmakers have been eager to gut both these laws, the first of which raises taxes to subsidize health care for poorer Americans and the second of which imposed new rules on bank business practices in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. They’d also like to reinstitute George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy, which were rolled back in a 2013 compromise between the two parties. Obama’s veto pen has meant a Republican Congress has been unable to reverse any of these legislative changes, but with Trump in office, lawmakers will have a good shot at the task. It won’t be easy: Democratic senators will likely seek to block any sweeping changes, but they may find the politics difficult, given their past criticism of the filibuster and the challenge of selling these laws to a divided public in the first place. But beyond any specific laws that Obama has put in place, this election will empower conservatives who have been seeking to roll back the federal government’s social services programs for decades. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s budget plans will become the de facto blueprint for the new administration, and those plans include large cuts to Medicaid and Medicare and even deeper cuts in all kinds of domestic spending, from food stamps to scientific research. Obama managed to hold the line against these Tea Party-inspired plans for eight years, but with Trump in office, there will be little to stop them from being enacted.

Donald Trump has spent decades in the spotlight, as wealthy real-estate developer, a reality-television star, and, in the past year and a half, an extremely effective political agitator, if not a smooth political operator. We know what he is like, and it is unreasonable to think that the office of the United States president will change much of it. The question now is what he will do. The 2016 election campaign was always long on personality, and even important moments for discourse—the debates, for instance—felt woefully short on substance. But Trump has signaled his intentions on several key issues. And now we’d best start paying attention. Trump’s first actions on immigration will likely be overturning the policies that US president Barack Obama put in place to protect undocumented immigrants. Under the policy known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), implemented by Obama as an executive order in 2012, more than 700,000 immigrants who were brought into the country illegally as children have been allowed to temporarily stay and work in the US. DAPA is a similar policy for the undocumented parents of American citizens; it has been challenged in court by several states. Trump has vowed to end DACA, DAPA, and so-called “catch-and-release” policies, or the practice of not detaining immigrants while they wait for their cases to be processed. He’s also said he’s going to triple the number of US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents and will “move criminal aliens out day one.” None of this will result in mass deportations in the short term—the US Department of Homeland Security does not have the funding to deport all 11 million people who are thought to be in the country illegally, and it’s unclear where Trump would get it. There’s also a question of physical resources; thousand of Central American women and children who showed up at the border in the summer of 2014 quickly overwhelmed existing detention facilities. It would take more funds still to build that wall between the US and Mexico that Trump has talked about from the start of his campaign. Aside from being very expensive, it would require congressional approval, and logistically, it would be very complicated to erect a barrier across the length of the entire border. But Trump doesn’t need a physical symbol like a wall to communicate his policy objectives. His tone alone will immediately destroy the fragile peace of mind that Obama’s approach had given millions of immigrants. Obama in essence had told them, if you don’t have a criminal record, we’re not coming after you. That assurance is gone under Trump. It’s no secret the US needs to invest in its crumbling bridges and highways. The backlog of infrastructure projects is expected to cost $3.6 trillion by 2020, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. The need is so stark, and the benefits to the economy so obvious, that it was one of the few areas where Trump and Clinton agreed this campaign season. But while rebuilding crumbling bridges and highways may be a smart long-term investment, it’s unclear whether Congress will have the appetite for what is essentially another stimulus program. Trump hasn’t given a precise figure for how much he wants to spend on infrastructure, other than to say he would at least double the $275 billion Clinton proposed. Trump says he would develop US transportation, water, telecommunications, and electricity systems, using “American steel made by American workers.” He would dangle tax credits to attract private investment and streamline permitting for pipelines and other energy projects. He is vague on how to pay for his plan, but has suggested he would issue bonds and support an infrastructure bank. “We’ll get a fund, make a phenomenal deal with low interest rates, and rebuild our infrastructure,” he said. Then there’s the funding option he unveiled at a Nov. 7 rally, near the tail end of his campaign trail. How you view Obamacare is a litmus test for your political leanings. Liberals see the program as a basic success, one that has provided millions of previously uninsured Americans with healthcare, but just needs a few tweaks. Conservatives see a disaster, with soaring premiums, failing state co-ops, and a two-tiered insurance system that is leaving many on Obamacare plans with fewer options. But both sides agree on the core problem with the current system: not enough young, healthy people are enrolling, meaning the insurance pools have too many sick patients who are driving up costs. But whereas Clinton had promised to recalibrate and expand the Affordable Care Act, Trump has said he’ll repeal it, and end the individual mandates requiring health insurance. As a replacement, he has proposed expanding health savings accounts, which allow families to set aside money tax-free to pay for insurance premiums and drug costs, and would let them fully deduct medical expenses from their taxes. He also wants to let insurance companies sell policies across state lines, generating more competition, and would allow drugs to be imported from overseas. Trump’s plan is mainly achieved through rewriting the tax code, which would likely need bipartisan support, and does little for low-income families who are not paying taxes. According to one analysis, the net effect could mean 25 million Americans could lose health insurance. One thing we know about Trump is that he isn’t for free trade. The Mexican peso has been tracking Trump’s odds of winning; when they improved, the currency frequency would plunge on the expectations that Trump will begin his promised demolition of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). You can assume that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is over, too.

It’s 2009 all over again. Except this time Republicans are in charge and Democrats have been run over. Against all odds, Republicans are suddenly looking at an emboldened House majority, a Senate majority that survived a near-death experience, and a friend in the White House — President-elect Donald J. Trump — for the first time in eight years. Tuesday’s astonishing victory means everything’s on the table for Republicans: Tilting the Supreme Court in a conservative direction for years to come, repealing Obamacare, overhauling the tax code, boosting defense spending, tearing up trade deals and cutting regulations. Some of this Republicans will be able to do under “reconciliation,” the special parliamentary procedure that Democrats used to enact the Affordable Care Act on a party line vote in 2010. Now Republicans can “reverse engineer” Obamacare with Democrats powerless to stop it. Tax reform, another GOP dream dashed during the Obama years, could also happen under this process. "A Republican president and a Republican Senate and a Republican House can do things to change this country,” said Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) as he basked in victory late Tuesday night. In a further nightmare for Democrats, Republicans can do so without the hesitation that the looming 2016 election caused the past two years. The 2018 Senate map strongly favors the GOP. And Republicans have traditionally done better in midterm elections. Trump, unlike President Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, also won’t have to worry about nettlesome congressional investigations. While Congress will ask questions of a Trump White House – and there are certain to be some contentious policy fights – Republicans on the Hill will fall in line with the Trump agenda when they have to do so. And they'll have a prime chance to advance their agenda with the policy-lite Trump in the Oval Office. “Earlier this year, our conference rallied around a positive and substantive agenda to keep America safe, reform our tax code, and lift our citizens out of poverty,” said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). “We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make these policies real, and we are focused on doing so.” That doesn’t mean it will be easy for Republicans. Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) must navigate his rocky relationship with Trump and the many Republicans on the Hill whose positions on abortion, taxes and immigration conflict with the president-elect’s values. “We have wars to win, threats to be dealt with and a stagnant economy which must be revived,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who opposed Trump. “To the extent that I can help President-elect Trump, I will.” Trump is also a mercurial figure who is used to the life of a billionaire CEO. He's never had to consult with committee chairmen and reluctant junior lawmakers. While Trump will have Vice President-elect Mike Pence and White House staffers to attend to those kinds of things, the incoming president will still have to get used to being a party leader rather than business tycoon. Trump has clearly animated the party faithful in a way that no Republican has quite matched since Ronald Reagan. That's a powerful weapon, and he can use to motivate his own rank-and-file in a way that few presidents could match. Republicans are looking at an open-ended opportunity next year to reshape American policy across an array of issue areas and the Supreme Court, with a vacancy ready to be filled due to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s blockade of Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland. That nomination is now a moot point. Hill Republicans aren’t betting on agreeing with Trump on every legislative issue. Foreign policy is one area of potential dissension, given Trump's praise for Russian President Vladmir Putin and tendency to abruptly change directions. Trump won’t have free rein on spending and taxes, either. His proposals on tax reform and infrastructure spending were projected to cost trillions of dollars. With the U.S. debt already nearing $20 trillion, and a debt ceiling increase due next year, Trump may find himself butting heads with budget hawks, especially if he seeks to boost defense spending . All these things won’t be possible at once, despite Trump’s campaign promises. Yet Republicans play down these potential conflicts. And dozens of them have a good relationship with Pence.

As Hillary Clinton supporters began absorbing their loss to Donald Trump early Wednesday morning, their rage turned to James Comey. Even before Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta appeared onstage to say Clinton wouldn’t immediately offer a concession speech, Democrats and their allies were already spreading their fury at the FBI director on social media. “I asked D strategist close to Clinton WTF is going on. Response ‘One word: Comey,'” tweeted Chris Cillizza, author of The Washington Post's The Fix. “If Trump wins, I suspect he owes a big ‘thank you’ to Jim Comey,” New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof tweeted. There is some evidence that Comey’s actions did erode Clinton’s lead in the polls. Before Comey’s bombshell announcement that he was investigating another batch of emails found on Anthony Weiner’s computer, FiveThirtyEight gave Clinton an 81 percent chance of winning, but it dropped to a 65 percent chance after Comey’s Oct. 28 letter to Congress. How much the announcement hurt Clinton is hard to say. Some pollsters attributed the Democratic candidate’s sizable lead in October to the fallout from Trump’s lewd tape — his losses rather than her gains. Still, Comey’s announcement hit Clinton on one of her weakest points: trustworthiness. A Washington Post/ABC poll found that as of this month, 44 percent of voters viewed Trump as trustworthy, compared with Clinton’s 39 percent. “Comey should be charged with interfering with an election,” Huffington Post columnist Ann Brenoff wrote on Facebook. “One third of the electorate voted during the 9 days between when he said he was investigating her and then said ‘never mind.’”

We awoke Sunday to yet another disturbance in the chronosphere — our twice-yearly jolt from resetting the clocks, mechanical and biological. Thanks to daylight saving time, we get a dose of jet lag without going anywhere. Most people would be happy to dispense with this oddity of timekeeping, first imposed in Germany 100 years ago. But we can do better. We need to deep-six not just daylight saving time, but the whole jerry-rigged scheme of time zones that has ruled the world’s clocks for the last century and a half. The time-zone map is a hodgepodge — a jigsaw puzzle by Dalí. Logically you might assume there are 24, one per hour. You would be wrong. There are 39, crossing and overlapping, defying the sun, some offset by 30 minutes or even 45, and fluctuating on the whims of local satraps. Let us all — wherever and whenever — live on what the world’s timekeepers call Coordinated Universal Time, or U.T.C. (though “earth time” might be less presumptuous). When it’s noon in Greenwich, Britain, let it be 12 everywhere. No more resetting the clocks. No more wondering what time it is in Peoria or Petropavlovsk. Our biological clocks can stay with the sun, as they have from the dawn of history. Only the numerals will change, and they have always been arbitrary. Some mental adjustment will be necessary at first. Every place will learn a new relationship with the hours. New York (with its longitudinal companions) will be the place where people breakfast at noon, where the sun reaches its zenith around 4 p.m., and where people start dinner close to midnight. (“Midnight” will come to seem a quaint word for the zero hour, where the sun still shines.) In Sydney, the sun will set around 7 a.m., but the Australians can handle it; after all, their winter comes in June. The human relationship with time changed substantially with the arrival of modernity — trains and telegraphs and wristwatches all around — and we can see it changing yet again in our globally networked era. We should synchronize our watches for real. I’m not the first to propose this seemingly radical notion. Aviation already uses U.T.C. (called Zulu Time) — fewer collisions that way — and so do many computer folk. The visionary novelist Arthur C. Clarke suggested a single all-earth time zone when he was pondering the future of global communication as far back as 1976. Two Johns Hopkins University professors, Richard Conn Henry and Steve H. Hanke, an astrophysicist and an economist, have been advocating it for several years. As strange as earth time might seem at first, the awkwardness would soon pass and the benefits would be “immense,” Professors Henry and Hanke argue. “The economy — that’s all of us — would receive a permanent ‘harmonization dividend’ ”— the efficiency benefits that come from a unified time zone. Drawbacks? Those bar-crawler T-shirts that read “It’s 5 o’clock somewhere” will go obsolete. Perhaps you’re asking why the Greenwich meridian gets to define earth time. Why should only England keep the traditional hours? Yes, it’s unfair, but that ship has sailed. The French don’t like it either. “The U.K. would turn into a time theme park,” suggested an English Twitter user, John Powers, “where you could experience 9 o’clock as your grandparents knew it.” People forget how recent is the development of our whole ungainly apparatus. A century and a half ago, time zones didn’t exist. They were a consequence of the invention of railroads. At first they were neither popular nor easy to understand. When New York reset its clocks to railway time on Sunday, Nov. 18, 1883, this newspaper explained the messy affair as follows: “When the reader of The Times consults his paper at 8 o’clock this morning at his breakfast table it will be 9 o’clock in St. John, New Brunswick, 7 o’clock in Chicago, or rather in St. Louis — for Chicago authorities have refused to adopt the standard time, perhaps because the Chicago meridian was not selected as the one on which all time must be based — 6 o’clock in Denver, Col., and 5 o’clock in San Francisco. That is the whole story in a nut-shell.” Time, that most ancient and mysterious of our masters, seemed to be coming under human jurisdiction. Time seemed malleable. It was no coincidence that H. G. Wells invented his time machine then, nor that Einstein developed his theory of relativity soon after. With everything so unsettled, Germany created Sommerzeit, “summer time,” as daylight saving time is still called in Europe.

All the dazzling technology, the big data and the sophisticated modeling that American newsrooms bring to the fundamentally human endeavor of presidential politics could not save American journalism from yet again being behind the story, behind the rest of the country. The news media by and large missed what was happening all around it, and it was the story of a lifetime. The numbers weren’t just a poor guide for election night — they were an off-ramp away from what was actually happening. No one predicted a night like this — that Donald J. Trump would pull off a stunning upset over Hillary Clinton and win the presidency. The misfire on Tuesday night was about a lot more than a failure in polling. It was a failure to capture the boiling anger of a large portion of the American electorate that feels left behind by a selective recovery, betrayed by trade deals that they see as threats to their jobs and disrespected by establishment Washington, Wall Street and the mainstream media. Journalists didn’t question the polling data when it confirmed their gut feeling that Mr. Trump could never in a million years pull it off. They portrayed Trump supporters who still believed he had a shot as being out of touch with reality. In the end, it was the other way around. It was just a few months ago that so much of the European media failed to foresee the vote in Britain to leave the European Union. Election 2016, thy name is Brexit. Election Day had been preceded by more than a month of declarations that the race was close but essentially over. And that assessment held even after the late-October news that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was reviewing a new batch of emails related to Mrs. Clinton’s private server. Mrs. Clinton’s victory would be “substantial but not overwhelming,” The Huffington Post had reported, after assuring its readers that “she’s got this.” That more or less comported with The New York Times’s Upshot projection early Tuesday evening that Mrs. Clinton was an 84 percent favorite to win the presidency. Then came a profound shift, as mainstream media organizations scrambled to catch the bus that had just run them over. By 10:30 p.m., the Upshot projection had switched around, remarkably, to 93 percent in favor of Mr. Trump. Other major sites also flipped from a likely Clinton victory to a likely Trump victory. John King of CNN proclaimed to his huge election night audience that during the previous couple of weeks, “We were not having a reality-based conversation” given the map he had before him, showing Mr. Trump with a clear opportunity to reach the White House. That was an extraordinary admission; if the news media failed to present a reality-based political scenario, then it failed in performing its most fundamental function. The unexpected turn in the election tallies immediately raised questions about the value of modern polling: Can it accurately capture public opinion when so many people are now so hard to reach on their unlisted cellphones? “I think the polling was a mess,” Stanley Greenberg, a Democratic pollster, told me Tuesday night. “But I think a lot of it was interpretation of the polls.” Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist, said on MSNBC, “My crystal ball has been shattered into atoms’’ because he predicted the opposite outcome. “Tonight data died,’’ he added. Regardless of the outcome, it was clear that the polls, and the projections, had underestimated the strength of Mr. Trump’s vote, and the movement he built, which has defied all predictions and expectations since he announced his candidacy last year. And that’s why the problem that surfaced on Tuesday night was much bigger than polling. It was clear that something was fundamentally broken in journalism, which has been unable to keep up with the anti-establishment mood that is turning the world upside down. Politics is not just about numbers; data can’t always capture the human condition that is the blood of American politics. And it is not the sole function of political reporting to tell you who will win or who will lose. But that question — the horse race — has too often shadowed everything else, and inevitably colors other reporting, too.