US Election 2016: An American Brexit?
- Published
The former UKIP leader tweeted his congratulations as Mr Trump declared victory
The polls were off. The political establishment took a kicking. Financial markets quivered with uncertainty.
In the final days of his campaign, Donald Trump promised a victory that would be "Brexit plus plus plus" - after his win at the polls became apparent late Tuesday it didn't take long for Americans and Brits to pick up the theme.
Among them the former leader of the pro-Brexit UK Independence Party Nigel Farage who tweeted his congratulations as Mr Trump took to the stage in New York to claim victory. Earlier in the evening Mr Farage had compared the result in Florida with a key battleground success in Britain's referendum vote to leave the European Union.
Others were less happy with the parallels.
Meanwhile, Trump supporters cheered the Brexit comparison. The Trump campaign took heart from June's EU referendum, and Mr Farage had appeared onstage with the Republican candidate during the election campaign.
And as results rolled in on Tuesday night chat about Brexit, external - a consistently big topic of conversation on social media all year - spiked. The term was mentioned in about 150,000 tweets in a matter of a few hours.
Meanwhile the election prompted liberal-minded Californians to think about a separation of their own. #Calexit hit Twitter's list of top trends, with many in the heavily Democratic state arguing that the size of their economy could allow them to go it alone.
Blog by Mike Wendling, external
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