What the Democrats must do to win back power

For the first time in 20 years and only the second since 1988 , the party’s candidate was outvoted in a US presidential election.

Al Gore lost in 2000 and Hillary Clinton in 2016 , but both could cling to the cold comfort that they narrowly won the popular vote while losing in the electoral college .

The blame game and recriminations within the Democratic Party have begun and it will be a long four years until the next presidential election, when Trump cannot win again.

New York has long been irrelevant in presidential races as featuring an overwhelmingly Democratic city in a solidly Democratic state.

This time the state stayed blue as expected, but, surprisingly, the margin shrunk a lot.

The party also went backwards, although not as dramatically, in the country’s next two biggest cities, Chicago and Los Angeles .

Crime, immigration and municipal dysfunction as reasons why many urban voters turned their backs on the Democrats this time.

In the run-up to election day many commentators said the race would come down to three blue wall’ states that voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1992 apart from 2016 .

Harris could have survived losing four other swing states if she had won Michigan , Pennsylvania and Wisconsin , but in the end she lost in all three , though narrowly.

If only 125,000 Americans in the right places had voted the other way on Tuesday , Harris would be preparing to enter the White House .