The world over defeated election candidates seldom recover to win again: in the US Grover Cleveland is the only defeated president to return to the White House four years later, back in 1892.
Close US presidential elections are not the friend of New Zealand daily newspapers trying to assess the likely winner before deadline, and if late urban votes can turn what looks like an unstoppable tide, it may be some days and some lawsuits before a final result is declared.
But few of the electoral college vote-rich battleground states remain too close to call; while important to ensure a Republican win, the Democrats must pull off an unlikely win in them all to win.
It will retain control of the House of Representatives and has wrested control of the narrowly-held Senate away from the Democrats. To boot, Mr Trump has a likely insurmountable lead in the popular vote nationwide.
When he first won the presidency eight years ago Mr Trump was a celebrity and novelty candidate who won his way through a weak Republican field, and was fortunate to be confronting an even more divisive Democratic candidate.
A chaotic presidency ensued, during which Mr Trump’s political management skills were often called into question, no more obviously than during his erratic oversight of the Covid-19 pandemic response, a confused exercise in prevarication which cost thousands of lives.
After Joe Biden defeated Mr Trump in 2020 that was seemingly the end of that, but as his continued prominence in US political life shows, Mr Trump should not have been underestimated.
While his popular appeal may continue to mystify many overseas observers, Mr Trump’s loyal backers are quite prepared to overlook his brushes with bankruptcy, his moral and legal failings and his gossamer-thin relationship with truthfulness in their belief that he will ensure that they retain rights they feel are under threat.
God and guns are determining factors for many US voters, and in the most religious and most rural US states support for Mr Trump has remained rock solid during the past eight years.
In the swing states Mr Trump regained the support he had lost when defeated in 2020, crucially winning suburban voters who eschewed him for President Biden.
These are the voters who suffered the most as the high inflation and interest rates which have bedevilled the Biden administration hit hardest. Like New Zealand a year ago, those voters backed the candidate that they felt was more likely to make an economic difference in their lives.
Vice-president Kamala Harris could not convince voters in Michigan, Wisconsin or Pennsylvania that her economic policies would make a material difference to their lives. It is questionable whether Mr Trump’s plans to restore tariffs will make any difference either, but for defensive and apprehensive suburban voters his plan represented a change and one which they hoped would be for the better.
Democrats will wake up disappointed and demoralised but Ms Harris almost certainly fared better than the original party standard bearer Joe Biden would have; the President’s stumblings and bumblings over the past year would likely have resulted in Democrats staying away from the polls in droves.
The last-minute change for Ms Harris to assume the candidacy avoided a landslide, but could not avert defeat.
Mr Trump’s likely victory makes the world a more uncertain place today. Despite his bombastic claims that he could sort out the Gaza conflict, Mr Trump’s mercurial ways add another layer of confusion to a muddied situation.
More problematically, a Trump victory is enormously significant in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine; most of the world, including the United States and New Zealand, has backed Ukraine with arms and money but if Ukraine loses US support, as seems likely, its existential struggle just became much harder.
At least Mr Trump’s likely win appears decisive; a repeat of the disastrous transition of 2020 seems unlikely.
But the confusion candidate won over the consitency candidate, making the future much more uncertain.
