Hillary Clinton leads Democratic rival Sen. Bernie Sanders in the Kentucky primary, but the race remains too close to call Tuesday night.
With nearly all the votes counted, Clinton had 46.8 percent of the vote to Sanders’ 46.3 percent.
Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes told CNN “I do believe Kentucky will remain in the win column” for Clinton. When pressed by the network, she agreed with their description of it as an “unofficial win.”
Clinton didn’t wait for it to be made official before she declared victory. “We just won Kentucky!” she tweeted. “Thanks to everyone who turned out. We’re always stronger united.”
Her message concluded with a link to her campaign fundraising page.
The Clinton campaign had spent days crisscrossing the state in order to deny Sanders another victory after his wins in Indiana and West Virginia.
The race in Kentucky, where 55 delegates were up for grabs, was expected to be tight. The state’s proximity to coal country threatened to cost Clinton the race given her recent comments vowing to put coal miners “out of business.”
However, Southern states have so far insulated Clinton from the waves of support for Sanders that carried the Vermont senator to victories in many northern states.
Clinton led Sanders with 1,716 pledged delegates to his 1,433 heading into Tuesday’s votes in Kentucky and Oregon.
But her legion of 524 superdelegate supporters places her within striking distance of the nomination; the former secretary of state presently needs fewer than 150 delegates to clinch her party’s ticket.
The Democrats’ proportional system of allocating delegates makes it difficult for Sanders to catch up, even with strong performances on the West Coast, where the biggest prize is the California primary.
The two candidates were headed toward splitting Kentucky’s delegates Tuesday night.
Clinton won Kentucky in the 2008 presidential primary, and her husband was the last Democrat to carry the Bluegrass State in a presidential election.
