The latest developments in the U.S. elections

Published 8:11 pm Tuesday, November 8, 2016

9 p.m.

Donald Trump has won Texas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Kansas and Nebraska while Hillary Clinton has won New York and Illinois.

Trump also on Tuesday won two of Nebraska’s congressional districts. In the state that awards by congressional district, one remains too close to call.

Email newsletter signup

Trump was awarded Texas’ 38 electoral votes, the second-largest prize on the map. He also won six from Kansas, four from his victories in Nebraska and three apiece from Wyoming, North Dakota and South Dakota.

Clinton was awarded 20 from Illinois and 29 from New York, the state both candidates call home. Trump had declared he would try to win New York but never mounted a serious effort there.

The Republican nominee now has 123 electoral votes. Clinton has 97.

___

8:55 p.m.

Hillary Clinton is watching election returns with a collection of close campaign aides and her family in a suite at the Peninsula New York, a luxury hotel in midtown Manhattan.

Aides say the group is snacking on salmon, roasted carrots and fries — along with vegan pizza and crème brulee for former President Bill Clinton, who’s careful about his diet. Her granddaughter, Charlotte, is wearing a dress emblazoned with the campaign logo.

Clinton and her husband have also been working on her election night remarks with her speechwriters.

Later Tuesday evening, they’ll move to the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City for her election night party. It’s a building with a glass ceiling — a nod to the historic moment.

___

8:51 p.m.

Donald Trump has won Mississippi and its six electoral votes.

That brings his Electoral College total in Tuesday’s election to 66, compared with Hillary Clinton’s 48.

The outcome was not unexpected. Mississippi has voted for Republicans in every presidential election starting with 1972, with the exception of Democrat Jimmy Carter in 1976.

___

8:40 p.m.

Hillary Clinton has won Rhode Island and its four electoral votes.

That brings her total Tuesday to 48, compared with Donald Trump’s 60.

It takes 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.

Rhode Island has voted for Republicans for president only four times since 1928.

In 2012, President Barack Obama defeated Republican Mitt Romney in the state by about 27 percent.

__

8:33 p.m.

Exit polls conducted by Edison Research for national media outlets suggest Hillary Clinton is still struggling with white voters who have put Georgia in the Republican column for every presidential election but one since 1980.

Exit polls in Virginia show Clinton and Republican Donald Trump split white Virginia voters with college degrees. In North Carolina, Trump apparently won a slight majority of college-educated whites. But in Georgia, whites with college degrees sided with Trump by more than 2-to-1.

Among whites with no degree, the gaps were even wider. Trump won about two out of three of those voters in North Carolina and Virginia. In Georgia, he won about four out of five.

___

8:27 p.m.

Donald Trump has won Alabama and its nine electoral votes after Sen. Jeff Sessions endorsed the billionaire candidate.

That brings Trump’s total in the Electoral College to 60 votes, to Clinton’s 44 votes.

It takes 270 votes to win the presidency.

The results continue the state’s streak of voting for Republicans every presidential election since 1980.

___

8:25 p.m.

A mariachi band has serenaded Donald Trump on the sidewalk outside Trump Tower in New York City.

The group of men in big white sombreros paraded down the sidewalk Tuesday across the street from the skyscraper playing horns and guitars.

The vibrant performance interrupted a mostly low-energy night outside Trump headquarters.

A separate group of about five Trump backers marched along the sidewalk across from the midtown Manhattan hotel where Trump is expected to address supporters later Tuesday night. They chanted, “Lock her up!” as they marched behind police barricades.

A group of enterprising vendors also patrolled the outside of the hotel, selling Trump buttons, shirts and hats.

___

8:25 p.m.

Texas authorities say they arrested a man who claimed to be working for Donald Trump for voter fraud.

Phillip Cook, Jr. was arrested after trying to vote for a second time at a polling station in an unincorporated area outside of Houston on Tuesday. Fort Bend County Sheriff Troy Nehls says Cook told poll officials and sheriff’s deputies that he was helping the Trump campaign and testing election security.

Nehls said Cook was booked on suspicion of a felony charge.

Trump has alleged widespread voter fraud and that there are insufficient safeguards to protect the integrity of the election.

___

8:13 p.m.

Donald Trump has won Tennessee and its 11 electoral votes.

Tuesday’s vote is the fifth presidential contest in a row in which the state voted for the Republican candidate. That includes the 2000 election, when native son Al Gore lost the state to Republican George W. Bush.

It takes 270 votes to win the presidency.

___

8:10 p.m.

An election watchdog says some voters were denied provisional ballots at several polling stations in Atlanta.

Georgia Election Protection coalition spokesman Harold Franklin says poll mangers refused to provide provisional ballots to voters Tuesday. He says the group received reports that voters were given no reason for being refused.

Franklin claims voters who are eligible or entitled to a provisional ballot were denied. He did not know the number of voters who were refused, but said the bulk occurred in Fulton County.

Franklin says he spoke with Fulton County election officials, who he said told polling managers to provide voters with ballots. The Fulton County elections office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Election Protection is organized by the Lawyers Committee for Civils Rights Under Law.

___

8:09 p.m.

Donald Trump has won South Carolina.

The Republican nominee was awarded the state’s nine electoral votes, giving him 40 for the night. The result was expected as the state has long been a Republican stronghold.

___

8:08 p.m.

Democratic Rep. John Carney has won the Delaware governor’s race eight years after losing his first bid to become the state’s chief executive.

Carney easily defeated Republican state Sen. Colin Bonini of Dover in Tuesday’s gubernatorial contest. The victory was driven by voter registration numbers that heavily favor Democrats.

Carney has said job creation and economic development will be among his top priorities, along with improving Delaware’s public education system.

He also has acknowledged that the next governor faces significant challenges given troubling revenue expectations and escalating costs for Medicaid and state employee health care.

Carney will succeed Jack Markell, who defeated Carney in the 2008 Democratic gubernatorial primary.

Carney previously served as lieutenant governor.

___

8:05 p.m.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has written in his father, former Rep. Lawrence Hogan, as his choice to be president.

Doug Mayer, Hogan’s spokesman, said Tuesday the Republican governor voted early.

Hogan has been saying for months that he wasn’t going to support Republican Donald Trump. He has said he has been extremely disappointed in the candidates from both major parties.

Mayer says the governor decided to write in the name of the person who taught him what it meant to hold public office with integrity.

___

8 p.m.

Democrat Hillary Clinton has won Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, Delaware and the District of Columbia while Republican Donald Trump has captured Oklahoma.

Clinton was awarded Massachusetts’ 11 electoral votes, 10 from Maryland, 14 from New Jersey and three each from Delaware and the nation’s capital, giving her 44 for the night. Trump picked up seven from Oklahoma, giving him 31.

The results Tuesday were not surprising. Massachusetts and the District of Columbia are two of the nation’s safest Democratic strongholds.

The last time Oklahoma went for a Democrat was 1964, when it voted for Lyndon Johnson. Maryland last went for the GOP in 1988.

New Jersey has been a safe Democratic state for 20 years. Its governor, Chris Christie, is a close Trump ally but is saddled with low approval numbers.

___

7:45 p.m.

A state official says Democrats have gone to court to extend voting across Colorado by two hours after the secretary of state’s voter registration system went down for nearly 30 minutes Tuesday.

Lynn Bartels, a spokeswoman for the secretary of state’s office, says the hearing was scheduled for federal court in Denver.

She says state officials are investigating what caused the outage, which forced in-person voters to cast provisional ballots. Some county clerks were unable to process mail ballots that needed to have the signature verified.

Tauna Lockhart, spokeswoman for the state information technology office, says the system came back up about 3:20 p.m. She says the incident is under investigation by state officials, but there is no evidence the network was hit by hackers.

___

7:35 p.m.

The North Carolina Board of Elections has agreed to extend voting in eight precincts in Durham County, where Democrats have a 4-to-1 registration advantage over Republicans.

The state board voted 3-2 Tuesday night to extend voting by an hour in two precincts most affected by a computer glitch. The problem forced poll workers to check for registered voters on paper printouts, causing long lines at some locations.

The board says six more precincts can stay open for a shorter time.

The NAACP’s North Carolina chapter had asked for the eight precincts to stay open for 90 extra minutes. Hillary Clinton’s campaign also supported keeping the polls open later in Durham.

Two groups filed lawsuits seeking to keep the polls open, but a state superior court judge declined to intervene.

___

7:32 p.m.

North Carolina got more attention than usual this election, and exit polls show why.

Exit polls conducted by Edison Research for national media outlets suggest a tight finish between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump for the state’s 15 electoral votes.

The polls suggest a majority of men back Trump, while Clinton won a majority among women — with the margins essentially even. The polls suggest women made up slightly more of the electorate.

About four out of five nonwhite voters backed Clinton, while about six out of 10 white voters supported Trump. But the exit polls don’t offer definitive information about actual turnout among those groups, with the estimates again pointing to a close finish.

___

7:30 p.m.

Republican Donald Trump has won West Virginia and its five electoral votes.

The Mountain State was one of the billionaire’s biggest supporters in the Republican primary. He is popular for promising to bring back coal jobs. Hillary Clinton had largely been largely shunned for making comments perceived as an affront to the industry.

The dynamic has resulted in one of the few states where Republicans didn’t shy from the brash businessman and instead looked to ride his coattails. Many Democrats for congressional and other races scrambled to distance themselves from Clinton and refused to endorse her.

West Virginia has voted for Republican presidential candidates in each of the last four presidential races.

It takes 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.

___

7:15 p.m.

Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams says he has found no evidence of fraud or intimidation at the city’s polls despite Republican candidate Donald Trump’s warnings about voter fraud.

Williams says no major problems have emerged among the 68 complaints his office investigated during the first half of Election Day.

Meantime, several Pennsylvania counties are reporting a handful of complaints about touchscreen machines switching votes. They say the machines are quickly being re-calibrated to fix the problem.

Pennsylvania Secretary of State Pedro Cortes says the GOP reported problems with about 25 machines, out of nearly 24,000 deployed statewide. He says in all cases votes ended up being recorded correctly.

State GOP Chairman Rob Gleason says he doesn’t see anything “nefarious” in the apparent vote switching on older machines.

___

7 p.m.

Republican Donald Trump has won Kentucky and Indiana while Democrat Hillary Clinton has won Vermont.

Trump was awarded Kentucky’s eight electoral votes and Indiana’s 11. Vermont gives Clinton three. These are the first states to be decided Tuesday in the 2016 general election.

The wins were expected.

Vermont has voted for a Democrat every election since 1988, while Kentucky has gone Republican every cycle since 2000.

Indiana is normally a Republican stronghold but went for President Barack Obama in 2008. The Republicans captured it again in 2012 and Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, is the state’s governor.

The winning candidate needs 270 electoral votes.