Former president Donald Trump came into election day with a fervent base of supporters and the experience of having already run for president twice. He also came with felony convictions and large numbers of voters who viewed him unfavourably.

He was, in short, a candidate weighed down by extraordinary baggage. But Trump drove past that, presenting himself to an electorate eager for change and unhappy with the direction of the country under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Supporters view unpredictable Donald Trump as an agent for change. Credit: Marija Ercegovac

Here’s what analysts will most likely be saying should he win.

By a decisive margin, voters thought the country was heading in the wrong direction – 74 per cent said so in an ABC/Ipsos poll released on Sunday morning. Since 1980, that one statistic, the number of voters who think the nation is heading in the wrong direction, has been a surefire predictor that the party in power would lose the White House.

Should he win, Trump will have succeeded in saddling Harris with Biden’s record. And he will have appealed to voters’ unease with his dark talk about the state of the nation, and with his gauzy recollections of the supposedly better days when he was president.

The economy – or rather public perceptions of the economy – show just how uneasy voters are. Prices climbed........

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