Associated Press has determined that Trump has won Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes).
Though most polls predicted the United States would elect its first female president almost a century after American women secured the right to vote, that outcome seems uncertain early Wednesday, with just a few states left to report results.
Democrat Hillary Clinton drew roughly the same level of support from women that they showed Barack Obama in his two presidential runs, the Associated Press reports based on exit polling. Her coalition also includes minorities and young people. But Republican Donald Trump has excited a base of white, non-college-educated men.
The election “was on track to produce one of the largest gender gaps since 1972, when the first national exit poll was taken,” AP says. Conducted by Edison Research for AP and television networks, the exit polls show a preliminary gap of 13 percentage points between the number of women who voted for Clinton and the number of men who did so.
Just over half of college-educated white women backed Clinton; four years ago, they’d favored Romney. But she garnered votes from less than a quarter of white, non-college-educated men. Obama had gotten a third of that vote in 2012.
Trump, criticized for sexist remarks and boasts, nonetheless drew 6 in 10 votes from white women without a college degree and 7 in 10 votes from white men with that background.
Last week, NPR reported, “An average of three recent national polls shows that women prefer Clinton by roughly 13 points, while men prefer Trump by 12, totaling a 25-point gap.”
Joe Arpaio lost his bid for a seventh term as sheriff of Arizona's Maricopa County. Self-proclaimed as "America's Toughest Sheriff," Arpaio is an immigration hardliner and Donald Trump supporter. In October, the Justice Department charged him with criminal contempt of court in connection with a lawsuit claiming racial profiling of Latinos by the sheriff's office.