It was the biggest political shock in living memory: Republican nominee Donald Trump won the presidency, defeating Hillary Clinton despite her comfortable lead in the polls as Election Day dawned.
The intricacies of how and why Mr. Trump won will be debated for a long time, while the agenda of a Trump administration is only beginning to take shape.
For now, here are the winners and losers of election night itself.
WINNERS
Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon
To the winner go the spoils — and to his aides go the plaudits.
Ms. Conway and Mr. Bannon took over a Trump campaign that was listing badly in August. The businessman’s first campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, had come and gone. The man who in effect replaced him, Paul Manafort, was on the way out.
Ms. Conway, a well-respected GOP strategist and pollster, seemed to improve the candidate’s focus. She sought to persuade him — albeit with limited success — to steer clear of self-defeating controversies. She drew on her own media skills, becoming one of his most effective TV surrogates.
Mr. Bannon had a lower public profile but was strategically vital, encouraging Mr. Trump to double-down on the base-first strategy that ultimately delivered the White House.
Matt Drudge/The Drudge Report
The website and its eponymous founder were among the biggest boosters of Mr. Trump, regularly propagating stories that were positive for him or that cast his rivals — including his internal GOP critics — in an unflattering light.
Mr. Drudge’s enthusiasm for Mr. Trump attracted plenty of critics. But the election result proved that the website still has its finger on the conservative pulse.
The race for the Senate was overshadowed by the seismic shock of Mr. Trump’s victory. But the GOP had a great night in the battle for the upper chamber.
Democrats began Election Day thinking they had a strong chance of netting the four seats they required to take control, assuming — as almost all the party’s lawmakers did — that Ms. Clinton would win the White House.
In the end, Democrats picked up just a single seat: Rep. Tammy Duckworth defeated incumbent Republican Sen. Mark Kirk in Illinois. Other highly fancied challengers fell short in Pennsylvania, Indiana, North Carolina and even Wisconsin.
Mr. McConnell easily retained the title of Senate majority leader after a night that was as good as he could have dared to expect.
Vice President-elect Mike Pence
The Indiana governor’s decision to join Mr. Trump’s presidential ticket paid off in a big way.
It didn’t always look as if it would. Mr. Pence, a committed Christian, was said to have been furious when a 2005 tape emerged in which Mr. Trump was heard bragging about grabbing women without their consent. More broadly, a heavy defeat for Trump would almost surely have besmirched Pence’s reputation as well.
Now, he will take office in January as the vice president. Speculation will build as to whether he might eventually ascend to the top job.
Trump’s Key Backers
Stepping aboard the Trump Train was at one time a very risky endeavor. Several of those who took the gamble will now be very glad they did. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is back on the national stage in a big way. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who has been under a large BridgeGate cloud, also has a new lease on political life. Former Speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) and Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions gave powerful backing to the president-elect.
Immigration Hawks
Republicans who want a more restrictive immigration policy are ecstatic. They soon will have a president whose signature proposal is building a wall along the southern border with Mexico.
The NRA
The gun rights group endorsed Mr. Trump back in May, with its executive director suggesting that members of the association who wanted someone else other than Mr. Trump to be GOP nominee ought to “get over it.”
In the early hours today, as Mr. Trump’s victory was confirmed, the group issued a statement asserting that voters had “sent a loud and clear message that our gun rights are not for sale.”
MIXED
The Speaker easily retained his party’s majority in the House. The bigger picture for Mr. Ryan is more complicated. He has positioned himself as the champion of a very different brand of Republicanism from that espoused by the president-elect. Now, Trump-Republicanism has won a stunning victory — which presumably weakens the case for the more cerebral, center-right variety with which Mr. Ryan is identified.
LOSERS
Opinion Pollsters and the Media
After the last presidential election, the GOP carried out a post-mortem. This time around, its opinion pollsters who will find themselves poking around at the corpse of their reputation.
From the pollsters’ perspective, the outcome was a disaster. The overwhelming evidence from national polls and swing-state surveys was that Mrs. Clinton would win — and it was all wrong.
There will be theses written on how the polls went so awry. That won’t do much to repair the public’s faith.
In the process, the media’s reliance on polls — a trait of virtually every news organization, including this one — needs to face serious scrutiny too.
More broadly, Mr. Trump and his supporters are gleeful at having won in the face of what they consider constant hostility from the “dishonest media.”
President Obama
Mrs. Clinton’s defeat spells big trouble for President Obama’s legacy.
It would be tough to argue that her defeat was his fault. His approval ratings have been at their highest levels in years, and he drew big crowds whenever he took to the stump for her.
Now he faces the very real prospect that his big achievements both domestically (the Affordable Care Act) and internationally (the Iran nuclear deal) will be wiped out by President-elect Trump, who will enter office with GOP majorities in the House and Senate.
Clinton Campaign Strategists
How Mrs. Clinton lost to such an unusual opponent as Mr. Trump — the most unpopular major party nominee of modern times — will be puzzled over for a long time. Whatever the answer, it won’t be good news for the people guiding her campaign.
From the Democratic perspective, this was a catastrophic, inexplicable loss. That is bad news for the reputations of everyone associated with that bid, including campaign manager Robby Mook and chairman John Podesta.
The Political Establishment
Mr. Trump’s victory came in defiance of just about every political norm. It wasn’t just his policies or his tone that flew in the face of conventional wisdom — though they did. The way he conducted his campaign was equally unorthodox. He spent relatively little on TV ads, did not seem overly bothered about establishing a campaign infrastructure and was sometimes just as indifferent about building alliances on Capitol Hill. He won — raising questions about whether the bedrock beliefs of the establishment are valid at all.
The Immigration Reform Lobby
Advocates for liberalizing immigration laws believed they were about to see movement under a President Clinton. Their dreams have died, at least for the moment, now that it will be President Trump instead.
This story originated at www.thehill.com
