Donald Trump is the president-elect of the United States of America.

At 11:34 p.m. PST, the Associated Press called the race and reported that Trump had captured the 270 electoral votes he needed to win.

In a stunning upset, America decided against making history with the election of its first female leader.

The Republic party will also hold majorities in both the House and the Senate, allowing Trump to run the country with few constraints on his power.

Trump, a reality television star and real-estate mogul, essentially hijacked the Republican ticket. In the final weeks of the campaign, he was denounced by many of the GOP's most prominent members. Now, with no political experience whatsoever, he has won the White House.

During an election cycle that spanned the better part of two years, there are few policies that Trump ever discussed in detail.

He vowed to build a wall along the United States' border with Mexico. There will also be tax cuts for the rich. He will repeal President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act. And though vague on how exactly it will be done, Trump said he will forcibly deport the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants that currently reside within America's borders and implement a temporary ban on all Muslims travelling to the United States.

He has also pledged to scrap international trade deals, including NAFTA, and renegotiate economic relations in the Western Hemisphere. But again, little is known about what plans of his own he might implement in place of those agreements.

Perhaps most disturbing, Trump said that if elected, he would pursue a criminal prosecution of Clinton and see her thrown in jail.

In so many other policy areas, Trump left voters all but completely in the dark.

We don't know what he will do to combat climate change, if anything. He has refused to reveal even the basics of his alleged plans to combat religious extremism in the Middle East. And he has said little about what he would do to heal a widening racial divide that's developed in America as a symptom of police violence against African Americans.

There are so many questions about how Trump will lead the world's most powerful nation. Now, America and the world will learn the answers to those questions when the man assumes office in January.

Early Wednesday morning (November 9), thousands of supporters gathered at the New York Hilton Midtown waiting for Trump to make his victory speech.

Just 20 blocks away, at the at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City, another more sombre crowd waited the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton. But she she never appeared.

Finally, after 2 a.m. EST, her campaign chair, John Podesta, walked on stage, told supporters Clinton would not speak until the following day, and instructed everybody to go home.

Trump's shocking upset marks the end of an election cycle that was incomparable in recent memory.

The ugliness—not just of Trump's demeanour and campaign style but of his policies—stoked a reemergence of white supremacy that is in many ways unprecedented in modern America.

On June 15, 2016, Trump officially announced his candidacy for president with a message that demonized entire ethnicities.

“When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best,” Trump began. “They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

Then came the promises to deport millions and implement a travel ban based entirely on religion.

In the final weeks of campaigning, even the most racist of those positions were overshadowed by Trump’s attitude and behaviour toward women.

After a leaked tape recorded by Access Hollywood in 2005 revealed that Trump had bragged about having admitted that he had grabbed women's genitals, at least 11 women came forward to describe how he had abused or otherwise acted inappropriately toward them.

In a bizarre reveal of his insecurities that occurred back in March, Trump used the opportunity of a Republican primaries debate to make a thinly-veiled boast about the size of his penis.

As the day of the vote neared, Trump also intensified claims that the election was rigged against him, undermining many people’s confidence in the impartiality and strength of America’s democratic system.

Despite controversial policy positions and Trump’s own admission that he had groped women, enough of the electorate came out and voted for him. Trump supporters refused to vote for Clinton despite character flaws in the Republican nominee that were so deep they were all but unimaginable before this election.

That so many millions of people felt they could forgive or ignore those transgressions underscores a deep divide in American society that has yet to be fully understood.