Donald Trump has been elected President of the United States, in a win that has shocked the world.

World leaders have congratulated Mr Trump  with Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull last night reinstating the strength of US and Australian ties.

In a number of statements posted to twitter, the Mexican prime minister also congratulated the US but refrained from directly mentioning Mr Trump himself, who has described Mexicans as rapists and murderers during his election campaign.

While the Vietnamese government has yet to make an official statement on the president-elect, the question remains as to whether the U.S under Mr. Trump’s leadership will counter Chinese aggression in the South China Sea.

Back in the US, insights into how the Vietnamese-American population voted are surfacing.

Four days before the election, the biggest Vietnamese newspaper in America conducted an online survey.

It showed that 52 per cent of its readers would vote for Hilary Clinton, 42 per cent would choose Donald Trump, while the remaining percentage would choose neither candidate.

The Người Việt survey engaged just over 3,800 respondents.

Vietnamese-American lawyer and philosophy professor Nguyen Huu Liem.(Photo courtesy: www.danluan.org)

Nguyen Huu Liem, a prominent Vietnamese-American lawyer and philosophy professor, predicted that the majority of young Vietnamese Americans would support Hilary Clinton, while older, middle class and conservative Vietnamese Americans would lean towards Trump.

In an interview with the Vietnamese website Zing.vn, the San Jose-based professor said the Vietnamese American vote in California had changed from largely Republican to Democrat since the community arrived 40 years ago.

He cited Vietnamese children born in the US as a reason for the shift, noting that young Vietnamese Americans care more about social welfare, gender equality, women’s rights and immigration policy.

– TiVi Tuan-san