Election Day Results: Donald Trump Wins Texas [UPDATED]

AUSTIN, TX — Donald J. Trump has won Texas’s 38 electoral votes, the Associated Press reported late Tuesday night.

Trump has 361,549 more votes than Hillary Clinton with 9 percent reporting. Donald J. Trump is up by 6 points with 9 percent of precincts reporting.

Some political pundits have said late in the campaign that Texas stood a good chance of swinging to Hillary Clinton this election cycle, but closer to Election Day pundits agreed it would be unlikely that the historically red state would turn blue. Still, Democrats have expressed hopes of building on the momentum gained during this election cycle in order to apply it to future elections.

Much of Trump's success can likely be attributed to the high early voting numbers as a record number of registered voters cast ballots before Nov. 8.

In the end, it was the white vote — a bloc Clinton had difficulty rallying to her side — that sealed the victory for Trump. Exit polls indicate that Trump won 69 percent of the white vote to 25 percent for Clinton. Collectively, the white vote proved too formidable to outweigh Clinton's gains with the black and Hispanic vote. Clinton won the black vote by an 84 percent to 11 percent margin, and the Hispanic vote by a 61 percent to 34 percent spread.

Those exit polls were published by CNN, the work Edison Research, the New Jersey-based firm that has conducted exit polls for the National Election Pool — a consortium of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox and The Associated Press, since 2003.

Those same exit polls also found a large gender gap. Trump defeated Clinton 56 percent to 37 percent with men, and in a virtual tie — 48 percent to 47 percen t— with women in Texas.

According to the exit polls, Clinton won the vote of 92 percent of Democrats, while Trump secured the votes of 88 percent of self-identified Republicans. Trump won among independents, 51 percent to 38 percent.

Still, the youth vote was decidedly for Clinton. She defeated Trump 54 percent to 37 percent among voters under 30, the exit polls indicated. Between those aged 30 to 44, the candidates effectively split the vote of with Trump winning 47 percent to Clinton’s 44 percent.

Older voters preferred Trump. Among voters 45 to 64, Trump held a commanding 58 percent to 38 percent lead. Among those 65 and over, his lead grew to 64 percent to 35 percent.

From earlier:

In the run-up to Election Day, early voting in Texas broke records for turnout — greater even than the historic election of 2008 when Barack Obama was first elected president that energized the electorate.

The level of registered voters broke the first record even before the early voting period that took place Oct. 24-Nov. 4. The state had 15.1 million registered voters for the upcoming Nov. 8 election, up from 13.6 million in the 2012 election. The total accounts for nearly 80 percent of the state's estimated voting population.

By Thursday, early voting numbers topped 4 million, shattering the old record set in 2008 when roughly 3.5 million people voted. Stated another way, more than 41 percent of all registered voters cast their ballots. And by the last day for early voting in Travis County where the state's capital of Austin is located, more than 50 percent of registered voters — that's 372,188 people — cast their ballots, KXAN reported.

Texas Secretary of State spokeswoman Alicia Pierce said the upward trend should continue statewide into Election Day.

“What’s interesting is that even if you adjust for the change in population or change in registered voters, we’re still seeing an increase in the number of people out there voting early, we’ll see if that trend continues through election day,” she told KVUE.

In Travis County, some 30,000 voters a day cast their ballots. Nationwide, by Friday evening, 51.07 percent of early voter turnout was reported.

The intense interest in the presidential election pitting Democrat Hillary Clinton against her GOP rival Donald Trump has resulted in huge turnout throughout the state — so much so that longstanding conservative Texas has emerged as something of a tossup state, with the two candidates virtually neck to neck.

In Houston, more than 1 million ballots were cast during the early voting period of Oct. 24 through Nov. 4 , which included mailed ballots counted with in person ballots cast in the early voting period.

In September, Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart estimated that about 2.2 million people would be registered to vote, about half of Harris County’s population of 4.6 million residents, with 1.2 to 1.4 million expected to vote.

In September, Stanart predicted that as many as 100,000 would cast ballots on the last day of early voting, but that number was exceeded with 107,887 registered voters showing up to cast ballots on the last day of early voting.

The last day of early voting was surpassed only by the first day on Oct. 24, which drew 129,014 voters to the polls in Harris County.

While Trump won Texas as a whole, it was Clinton who won Harris County voters with 52.3 percent of the ballots to Trump's 46.4 percent.

Clinton also won in Fort Bend County taking 51 percent to Trump's 46 percent, but lost in Montgomery County, receiving 44 percent of the ballots there, to Trump's 52 percent.