Trump wins key battleground state of Florida

Published 10:01 pm Tuesday, November 8, 2016

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on Election Day 2016 (all times EST):

10:50 p.m.

Donald Trump has won the key battleground state of Florida.

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Trump on Tuesday was awarded 29 electoral votes.

He now has 197 electoral votes. His Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton has 131.

Both candidates have spent an extraordinary amount of time in Florida, one of the most important prizes on the map. Trump calls Florida his “second home” and his campaign acknowledged that a win there is vital to his White House hopes.

Barack Obama captured the Sunshine State in both 2008 and 2012.

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10:43 p.m.

Hillary Clinton has won Colorado.

The Democratic nominee captured its nine electoral votes Tuesday. She now has 131 total electoral votes while her Republican opponent Donald Trump has 168.

Colorado has become an attainable state for Democrats in recent years thanks to shifting demographics.

Clinton tried to woo a surge in Latino voters and the state’s college-educated whites while Trump repeatedly made pitches to Colorado’s large military population and swaths of rural voters.

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10:40 p.m.

Hillary Clinton has won Virginia.

The Democratic nominee has captured its 13 electoral votes.

Virginia was reliably Republican for decades until Barack Obama won it twice, thanks in part to huge turnout from Washington, D.C.’s suburbs. Clinton’s running mate, Tim Kaine, is a senator from Virginia, though Trump made a late push in the state.

The victory gives her 122 electoral votes. Her Republican opponent Donald Trump has 168.

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10:37 p.m.

Donald Trump has won the electoral prize of Ohio, a state known for picking presidents.

The Republican wins the state’s 18 electoral votes in Tuesday’s election, bringing his total to 168. Hillary Clinton has 109.

Clinton had appeared ready to concede Ohio’s 18 electoral votes to Trump as polls showed him pulling ahead even in some traditionally Democratic blue-collar areas. But Trump struggled after release of a video in which he talked about groping women and kissing them without their permission.

Republicans held their nominating convention in Cleveland. Governor and one-time Republican presidential rival John Kasich refused to endorse Trump.

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10:25 p.m.

Donald Trump has won Missouri.

The Republican nominee was awarded its 10 electoral votes. The result was not as a surprise, as the last Democratic victory in the Show Me State came in 1996.

Trump now has 150 electoral votes. His Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton has 109.

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10:21 p.m.

Hillary Clinton has won New Mexico and its five electoral votes.

That brings her electoral college vote total in Tuesday’s election to 109. Republican Donald Trump has 140 votes.

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10 p.m.

Republican Gary Herbert has been re-elected governor of Utah.

Herbert had a strong advantage in Tuesday’s elections and was considered the favorite in the conservative state. But many Utah conservatives were not enthused about GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. And Herbert had vacillated on his support for the New York billionaire.

Herbert has been in office since 2009 and had been challenged by Democrat Mike Weinholtz, a wealthy former CEO of a medical staffing company.

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10 p.m.

Donald Trump has won Montana.

The Republican presidential nominee on Tuesday was awarded the state’s three electoral votes.

The result was not a surprise, as Montana was considered a safely Republican state.

Trump now has 132 electoral votes. His Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton has 104 votes.

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9:40 p.m.

Preliminary exit polls show the racial divides that were expected to define the 2016 presidential election.

Polls conducted for national media by Edison Research show Republican Donald Trump winning a majority of white voters while Democrat Hillary Clinton is drawing support from about three out of four nonwhite voters.

Trump’s support is strongest among whites without a college degree. He’s winning nearly two-thirds of them. Whites with college degrees are split between Trump and Clinton. Trump is winning both among white men and white women, though his margin is much higher among men.

Clinton’s strongest support comes from African-Americans. She’s winning about nine out of 10 black voters. She’s winning about two out of three Hispanics and Asian-Americans.

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9:30 p.m.

Republican Donald Trump is maintaining Republicans’ advantage among white voters nationwide, but perhaps not by the usual margin that the party’s nominees have enjoyed.

Preliminary exit polls of voters who have already cast presidential ballots show Trump winning a majority of whites. He has not quite reached the roughly six-out-of-10 share that Mitt Romney notched four years ago in his unsuccessful challenge of President Barack Obama.

The difference appears to come among white women. Trump is posting about the same, if not a slightly wider margin among white men as Romney did in 2012. But his lead over Clinton among white women appears to be in single digits, short of Romney’s double-digit advantage four years ago.

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9:28 p.m.

Donald Trump has won Louisiana and its eight electoral votes.

That extends his Electoral College total in Tuesday’s elections to 137, compared with Hillary Clinton’s 104.

History was on Donald Trump’s side in the state. Louisiana hasn’t given its electoral votes to a Democrat since Bill Clinton won 52 percent of the vote two decades ago.

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9:26 p.m.

Hillary Clinton has won Connecticut.

The Democratic nominee on Tuesday was awarded Connecticut’s seven electoral votes.

The result was not a surprise, as Connecticut was considered a safely Democratic state.

Clinton now has 104 electoral votes. Her Republican opponent Donald Trump has 129.

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9:15 p.m.

Republican Eric Holcomb has won the governor’s race in Indiana and Democrat Jim Justice has won the governor’s race in West Virginia.

Holcomb defeated Democrat John Gregg in Tuesday’s election and will succeed Gov. Mike Pence. Pence is presidential candidate Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate.

In West Virginia, Gregg defeated state Senate President Bill Cole.

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9:08 p.m.

Republican Donald Trump has won Arkansas and its six electoral votes.

That brings his electoral vote total in Tuesday’s election to 129. Democrat Hillary Clinton has 97.

It takes 270 votes to win the presidency.

The result was expected. Earlier polling showed Trump leading Clinton by double digits in the state where she served as first lady for 12 years while her husband was the governor.

The once reliably blue state has turned red in recent years. Republicans now control all of Arkansas’ statewide and federal offices, as well as a majority of seats in both chambers of the state legislature.

Arkansas has backed the Republican candidate for the White House in every election since 1980 — except for years when Bill Clinton was running for president.

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9:05 p.m.

Hopeful Hillary Clinton supporters have gathered on a Brooklyn street corner they expect to be prophetic: The intersection of President and Clinton Streets.

Photos and video posted on social media Tuesday show hundreds of people gathered for a block party where the streets cross.

Organizers have set up a large screen to stream election coverage. A food truck is dispensing tacos to the crowd.

The street signs in the intersection have been an attraction all Election Day for Clinton boosters snapping selfies.

It is just under a mile from Clinton’s national campaign headquarters in Brooklyn.

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9:05 p.m.

Polls in Colorado will close at 7 p.m. MST after a judge denied the Colorado Democratic Party’s request to extend voting by two hours.

The head of the Colorado Democratic Party argued that voting hours should be extended to account for a 29-minute computer glitch Tuesday afternoon. The statewide glitch affected same-day voter registration and caused some voters to have to cast provisional ballots.

The Secretary of State opposed the extended hours. Deputy Secretary of State Stephanie Staiert says no one was prevented from voting because of the glitch.

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9:01 p.m.

Republican Doug Burgum has won the North Dakota governor’s race.

The Fargo businessman and onetime Microsoft Corp. executive was considered a shoo-in in Tuesday’s election. He defeated Democrat Marvin Nelson.

The matchup focused on qualifications to lead the socially conservative state amid declining oil and crop revenues.

Burgum has stuck to themes of budget discipline, job creation and opposition to tax increases. Nelson has been highly critical of deep cuts to government agencies and a massive raid on the oil-rich state’s savings to make up for a more than $1 billion budget shortfall due to a drop in oil drilling and depressed crude prices

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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.

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.

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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.

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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.