To outward appearances, little today is different — $6bn of spending has produced an unchanged Democratic President, a repeat of the last divided Congress and, it is confidently forecast, continued political dysfunction. And yet something fascinating and profoundly hopeful has happened, too. Barack Obama’s re-election was not only a triumph of campaign organisation and political resilience in an age of economic discontent, it stood as a victory for common sense — a reflection of what America truly is, rather than the fulfillment of a warped conservative vision that contradicts reality.

It was even a good night for two much-maligned bodies, the pollsters and the Electoral College. The former called a close election exactly. The latter, an 18th-century anachronism, did precisely what it’s supposed to do — translate a narrow majority of the popular vote into an unequivocal majority where it constitutionally matters.