But what does this election mean right now, about 24 hours later?
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The spectre of racism and sexism can't be ignored in this election: many have pointed out how America is less safe today for women and most minority populations. This is unacceptable, and the election is a sad reminder that white people--especially men but also women--supported a man for president based in part on his misogyny and white supremacy.
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But the narrative around this being a massive racial shift in American politics is not in accordance with emerging data. While it is certainly the case that Clinton did substantively better among non-whites, the reality is that her numbers fell in relation to Obama's in 2012: not just among blacks, but among Asians and even Latinos. According to the New York Times' exit polling, Trump gained no fewer than 7 points from each of these minority groups.
This says a couple things: American politics is deeply racially-segregated, has always been so, and is likely to remain so. But it also says that race was less polarizing among actual voters than it was when Obama ran. It was--from the voters' aggregate perspective on racial terms--an election like any other.
And despite Trump's pervasive misogyny, much the same can be said about gender. Exit polling data here demonstrates that while Trump did indeed gain 5 points from men, he only lost 1 point from women. The 5 point male pickup could very well be due to the appeal of his anti-feminist rhetoric, but the collapse of female support for the Republican nominee failed to materialize, whatever the media narrative.
So while many activists are right to be skeptical of class-based analyses that patch over Trump's white misogyny, we really do have to examine the stark trends in income demographics
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One of the narratives that came out of the election was that Trump's win was based on a 'lower class' revolt against the liberal elite. And while this has been tempered by people noting that Clinton won a majority of support among those making 50,000 or less, many of the same people failed to acknowledge relative trends in income data vis-a-vis 2012.
What this shows is that while that the richest Americas stayed more or less static in their preferences (which were evenly divided between the parties), there were shifts among populations making less than 200,000 dollars. And those shifts do demonstrate a revolt against the Democratic status quo among lower and middle income Americans. Clinton picked up negligible support among those making 50 to 100k, but gained nearly 10 points among 100-200K earners.
Trump is the real story-maker here, picking up 16 points among the lowest income Americans, and another 6 points among those in the 30-50K range.
In a sense, this is a rejection of the general Democratic strategy to ignore the struggles of working Americans. When Michelle Obama said that America was already the greatest country on earth, she--and the Democratic establishment--were happy with a status quo that is predicated on growing inequality of both opportunity and condition. Clearly, the message was lost among the masses.
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Perhaps one factor which can be emphasized above all is the general turnout. As the below image shows, the issue was less a mass racist turnout for Trump, and more an enthusiasm gap for the Democratic coalition, which was extremely effective in the two Obama campaigns. Simply put, Trump got fewer raw votes than either Romney or McCain, but was still able to eke out a Electoral College victory.
At the end of the day, this was a sad day for American politics, and a partial indictment of the white working class there, but it was also a failure of the Clinton campaign, and the broader DNC.
They failed to acknowledge working-class discontent, failed to visit key battleground states, failed to marshal their massive warchest, failed to pull the vote, and failed to select a candidate that was--above all--a generator of much-needed enthusiasm.
