The comeback candidate — Trump exceeded all expectations

Yesterday, Americans across the nation streamed into their polling stations and cast their ballots for the next President of the United States. For many, it was a day of unbridled anxiety, one that saw their political ideology either reign supreme in Washington, or get cast into the shadows. Yet, for others, it was a day that simply marked the end of a horrendously protracted election cycle.

It feels as if the 2016 presidential race had been dragging on for the better part of a decade, that we were mired in the same controversies, and watching the same worn-out attack ads for years on end. Now here we are, a few short strides removed from crossing the finish line and finally having put this fatiguing contest to rest.

{mosads}However, as had been typical with this topsy-turvy election, the presidential race was certain to be a wildcard affair. Just a few weeks ago, many had labeled Donald Trump’s White House aspirations as effectively dead on arrival. His candidacy was regularly besieged by one exceptionally costly scandal after another.

By mid-October it seemed as if months of crossing every known political boundary had caught up to the Republican Nominee, having dug a hole so deep that no political office-seeker could hope to climb out of it.

Yet, after a relatively strong performance in the final presidential debate and a remarkably disciplined final two weeks of the campaign, mixed with a rough stretch for Secretary Clinton after additional WikiLeaks revelations and the short-lived reopening of the FBI investigation into her use of a private email server, Trump had surged back into contention. In the span of a couple of weeks, he went from cleanly losing virtually every swing state, and even dropping former GOP strongholds, to regaining lost ground and presenting Clinton with a strong challenge in several must-win states.

Moreover, Trump had erased a commanding Clinton national lead, which sat in the double-digits in many polls, settling near or within the margin of error in those very same polls on election day. In the most recent data available prior to the closing of the polling stations, Trump had regained control of Ohio and Iowa, and was virtually tied with Clinton in North Carolina and Florida. He was only down four points or less in Nevada, New Hampshire, and Colorado, yet uncomfortably trailed Clinton by between 4.2 and 6.2 points in Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

The evidence didn’t clearly support a Trump victory, although it did indicate that the man’s message had resonated with a large swath of American voters, which made him uniquely dangerous. The significance of Trump’s image as security-conscious in an age of terrorism, his status as the outsider antithesis of a highly unpopular and ineffective Washington establishment, and most importantly of all, the perception of him serving as a restorative economic force, could not be understated.

The question that remained late on Tuesday evening, the one many of us were intensely curious about is if Trump would muster one last improbable comeback. For over a year, Trump had repeatedly been politically pronounced dead, only to rise again, defying every expectation in the process. As vote totals rolled in throughout the night, many of us sat in front of our television screens wondering if Donald Trump, the “Comeback Candidate” of 21st Century American politics, would swing enough purple states to capture the title of president-elect.

We wondered if Trump supporters were in store for a strikeout in the bottom of the ninth inning, or a walk-off home run. The answer we received, after an entirely unexpected coup in virtually every critical swing state, was that Trump didn’t simply merely hit a walk-off home run, he hit a walk-off grand slam. The perennial political underdog has become the President-elect.

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