Carter, unlike Clinton, was an incumbent. But, similar to this year, the race looked close. Reagan, although a much more conventional politician than Trump, inspired doubts and fearsabout his qualifications. Carter had won the White House in a tight election in 1976 — closer than the 2012 election that Obama won — and it wasn’t an Electoral College blowout for Carter. Just like now, there was good reason to believe that the country was divided and the parties were too. Just as Clinton fought to beat Bernie Sanders in the primaries, Carter faced a challenger to the left in Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy. The Republican Party, too, was divided, between an establishment candidate —George H.W. Bush — and a newcomer from the entertainment industry.

And then on election night, the map went red.

Julia Azari, "Are looking at another 1980," FiveThirtyEight

Firsts during Election 2016

• Democratic Governor Kate Brown of Oregon held off a challenge by Republican Bud Pierce. This was the first time Oregonians voted in someone openly bisexual. Brown was sworn in last year after her predecessor, John Kitzhaber, resigned in scandal. The election was for the final two years of Kitzhaber's term.
   
• Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto, 52, filled retiring Senator Harry Reid's vacancy as senator from Nevada. She's the first Latina in the Senate.
   
• Minnesota elected the United States' first Somali-American lawmaker, Ilhan Omar. 

   

• Democrat Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, who ousted Republican Senator Mark Kirk, is the first Thai-American in the Senate. 

•  

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.

A note sent to staff members from Huffpost’s Washington Bureau Chief Ryan Grim on Tuesday evening said the decision to remove the note was for a “clean slate”.

“The thinking is that (assuming he wins) that he’s now president and we’re going to start with a clean slate,” Grim wrote in the memo, obtained by POLITICO. "If he governs in a racist, misogynistic way, we reserve the right to add it back on. This would be giving respect to the office of the presidency which Trump and his backers never did."