Shocked. Afraid. Scared. Celebration. Joy. No matter which side of the coin you fall on in your reaction of Election Day, there are some questions that need to be asked. Were these candidates our best options? Is this really the America that we have grown up in? Really the people that we want to run the country? Really the America that we call our home? Yes, it’s true that either of the two candidates for the presidency would’ve been bad in their own ways, but how did this happen? No one predicted this. Not one of us pundits and political commentators, or really anyone for that matter, seemed to really believe that what unfolded last night could have happened. But in an election cycle that has repeatedly brought more surprise and shock with every day that passes, is there really anything to be surprised about anymore? There is but only one thing that can really be stated. Donald Trump will be the 45th President of the United States.

Now there are numerous questions that will be asked. Will he build a wall? Will his proposed ban on Muslim immigration happen? What will our reputation around the world be? These only scratch the surface of the questions that will be asked, but there is honestly no way to predict what will happen. After this election cycle, anything is possible.

How did Trump achieve this? How did he win? There are numerous answers to both of these questions, but the first is simple; we won the Rust Belt and Florida. He unprecedentedly won Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, all states that are typically blue states, but more importantly, states that he couldn’t win without. And then, the all important Florida. There’s simply no way he could’ve won without those states.

There’s also one more factor that fueled Trump’s path to the White House, and it came through one of the people that have been criticizing him the most, Gary Johnson.

The former governor of New Mexico played a similar role to Ross Perot in the Bill Clinton vs. George H. W. Bush election. In essence, Ross Perot took about 19 percent of the popular vote and essentially left a door wide open for Bill Clinton to win the presidency. While Johnson received no where near the 19 percent that Perot reached, Johnson won about three percent of the popular vote, he swayed the election away from Clinton. In states that were heavily expected to go either one way or the other, Johnson didn’t impact the race very much. However, in the key swing states, where Trump only ousted Clinton by a few points, Johnson made a massive impact. The Libertarian Party nominee took about three percent in each of these key states, which was typically less than the margin that Clinton would lose a state by. The reason that this is significant is because Johnson was the main choice of a protest vote from disenfranchised Bernie Sanders supporters that would have typically went to the Democratic nominee. So, in essence, Trump should be getting on the phone to thank Gov. Johnson.

So there it is. President Donald Trump. What seemed like a joke last June has become a reality. Prepare yourselves, the next four to eight years will be something for the history books.