"We have a lot to celebrate, a lot to celebrate. This is a celebration," Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson told supporters Tuesday night.

Green Party candidate Jill Stein struck a more ominous tone early Wednesday morning before the final result had been called, telling Al Jazeera the U.S. political system is "toxic and predatory" and forecasting "trouble in the White House."

Despite Johnson's calls for celebration and assertion that the election results mean "there is going to be a third voice in this country," in the end, most voters made their binary choice.

"This [was] not the year to cast a useless protest vote," said Elizabeth Sherman, government professor at American University's School of Public Affairs. "There's a lot at stake this election, it's a very close election, and the message is out, every vote counts. People remember Ralph Nader." (Nader, the Green Party candidate in 2000, famously won nearly 100,000 votes in Florida while Democrat Al Gore lost the state by just 537 votes. This year in Florida, Trump bested Clinton by nearly 129,000 votes in the state, while Johnson and Stein took home more than 268,000 votes between them.)