As the election count was under way on Tuesday night, I visited the two places in New York where Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump planned to hold their victory parties. The locations at the cavernous glass Javits Center for Clinton and Hilton Hotel for Trump are barely a mile apart, but they were a revealing study in cultural contrasts.

The Clinton event was organised with a slick hyper-efficiency. The party had clearly been planned for months on the presumption of victory and it reeked of professional stage management. However, it also felt distinctly clinical, if not impersonal.

The Trump event, by contrast, felt chaotic and improvised. It had been thrown together so rapidly that there were still tourists staying in the hotel, and the system for channelling guests through the lobby was erratic, relying on hastily created signs. As the night wore on, one bar ran low on alcohol and there was little food. But that air of improvisation also made it feel enthusiastic — and distinctly human.