As first polls close, Trump wins in Indiana, Kentucky; Clinton takes Vermont

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

The next states to release early exit polls are South Carolina, Virginia and Georgia with Florida and New Hampshire not far behind.

It will be several hours until the world will have a more solid idea of who may be leading in the election.

In Arizona, the state’s most populous county may not know its vote totals on Tuesday, which could leave in doubt the presidential race in the traditionally Republican-voting state.

Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, expects to have more than 350,000 uncounted early ballots by the time the polls close. Roughly 1.1 million voters in the metropolitan county had returned early votes as of Tuesday, up 140,000 from 2012.

Election workers had counted roughly 800,000, leaving more than 200,000 to count. Roughly 150,000 are expected to have been dropped off at polling sites around the county.

Elizabeth Bartholomew, communication manager for Maricopa County Recorder’s office, says, “If there’s a large enough gap in votes, you might not be able to call some races.”