How Trump won

CNN's Maeve Reston and Stephen Collinson report: From the beginning, everyone underestimated Donald Trump. He pulled off a stunning victory after the most unprecedented of presidential campaigns.

Trump channeled the fury of average Americans against Washington. He tapped into their anxiety about the present and the fear of the future. He spoke to the pain they felt about working hard and getting left behind.

And in doing so, he eviscerated every convention about politics.

The pundits thought Trump's reality show antics, his vulgar rhetoric, speeches filled with falsehoods and insults thrown at almost every sector of American society -- Latinos, African Americans, war heroes, women and Muslims -- would disqualify him from the presidency.

It didn't.

Instead Trump marshaled a movement -- a modern day uprising of forgotten Americans, reminiscent of Richard Nixon's "silent majority" of the late 1960s.

How they missed it

CNN's Dylan Byers reports: The American political-media establishment does not understand the depth of anger in its own country.

That is one of the most significant lessons of the 2016 presidential election, in which Donald Trump overcame the doubts of a majority of reporters, pollsters and political scientists who believed Hillary Clinton was headed for a decisive victory.

Instead, white rural voters turned out in numbers that few so-called political experts expected, delivering that decisive victory to Trump.

"It's a debacle on the order of Dewey defeats Truman," Larry Sabato, the University of Virginia political scientist, told CNNMoney, referring to the famously incorrect headline that followed the 1948 presidential election.

"The media are so, so far removed from their country," said Alec MacGillis, the veteran political journalist who writes for ProPublica. "The gaps have gotten so large. The media are all in Washington, D.C., and New York now thanks to the decline of local and metro papers. And the gaps between how those cities and the rest of the country are doing have gotten so much larger in recent years."

Three days before the election, several media outlets and data journalists had put Trump's likelihood of winning between 2% (Huffington Post) and 15% (The New York Times).

From CNN Moscow's Alla Eshchenko: Putin congratulates to Trump

The Kremlin released this statement on Donald Trump's victory:

"Russian president V. Putin has send a message to D.Trump with congratulations over his victory in US elections.

"In his message, V. Putin expressed a hope for a mutual cooperation in getting US-Russian relations out of the critical condition and in solving vital questions of the international agenda and looking for effective response to global security challenges.

"Russian president also expressed belief in the fact that building a constructive dialogue between Moscow and Washington, based on principles of equality, mutual respect and real consideration of each other’s stands is in favor of the interests of our countries and the international community.