As the dust settles on Donald Trump's stunning victory, the political currents he rode to the White House are becoming clear.
The billionaire property mogul owes his success to the voters he called the forgotten men and women of America. They were overwhelmingly white, from rural counties and the industrial midwest. They lacked the university education of Hillary Clinton's supporters, felt betrayed by Democratic and Republican elites, and recognised a candidate who spoke their language about foreign trade deals and illegal immigration.
They cared not a whit about Trump's character, his sneering dismissal of Muslims and Latinos and his wilful appeal to the darkest corners of the human spirit, which his opponents - and even for a time his own party - thought would sink his chances.
They responded in their droves to an outsider who with deadly aim talked directly about their resentments and promised to repair their broken lives and their cracked system of government, even if he didn't offer many clues about how he would achieve it.
No other candidate came within cooee of recognising their raw frustrations. They went largely unrecognised by the pollsters, though Trump sniffed them out and played to their fears.