For a live feed of statewide election results from the Arkansas Advocate, click here.
The Associated Press has projected President Joe Biden as the winner of today’s Democratic primary in Arkansas, while former President Donald Trump is the projected winner of the state’s Republican primary.
In Independence County, unofficial results show Trump winning the Republican primary with 2,718 votes to Haley’s 426. Biden collected 315 votes in the Democratic primary, with Marianne Williamson coming in second with 14 votes.
Below are the unofficial results from all Independence County races:
The Associated Press also reports Justice Courtney Hudson has been reelected to the Arkansas Supreme Court in a victory that will also hand Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders a new appointment to the court.
Hudson defeated Circuit Judge Carlton Jones in the race for position two on the seven-member court. The two were running to replace Justice Cody Hiland, who Sanders appointed to the court last year.
The race for chief justice remained too early to call Tuesday night, with three justices and a former lawmaker vying for the seat or a spot in a November runoff for it.
Hudson’s victory will create a vacancy on the court in January when she takes the position two seat. The incumbent justice ran for Hiland’s seat in an effort to serve more time on the court because of the state’s judicial retirement rules.
Sanders appointed Hiland to the court last year to fill the vacancy created by Justice Robin Wynne’s death. Hiland, a former state Republican Party chairman and federal prosecutor, was not allowed to run for the seat since he had been appointed to it.
Hudson said she wanted to honor Wynne and his family, and thanked the people of Arkansas for their support.
“I’d like continue what I’ve always done in providing senior leadership on the court and ensuring that our focus remains on the constitution and that the rule of law always wins the day, and being a good judge,” Hudson told The Associated Press Tuesday night.
Jones would have become the first Black justice elected to the court if he had won the race.
Arkansas’ court races have been the focus of outside conservative groups in recent years, and Hudson in 2018 sued to block ads from the groups that targeted her. Those groups, however, stayed away this year’s court race.
Three of the court’s seven justices — Karen Baker, Barbara Webb, and Rhonda Wood — are running against former state legislator Jay Martin for chief justice. If none of the candidates win a majority, the top two will advance to a November runoff.
The four are running to succeed Chief Justice Dan Kemp, who was first elected in 2016 and is not seeking reelection. A win by one of the three sitting justices would give the court its first woman elected chief justice in history.
Sanders declined to say who she voted for in the races after casting her ballot at a Little Rock community center Tuesday morning.
“I’m going to keep that one to myself so I don’t create any issues, but I’m confident we’re going to have a really strong Supreme Court and excited about what the future holds,” Sanders told reporters.
The seats are up as the state’s highest court is poised to take up key cases in several high-profile areas. Abortion rights supporters are trying to get a measure on the November ballot that would scale back a ban on the procedure that took effect when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.
The court has also been asked to weigh in on a fight between Sanders and the state Board of Corrections over who runs Arkansas’ prison system. Attorney General Tim Griffin is appealing a judge’s ruling against a law Sanders signed that took away the board’s ability to hire and fire the state’s top corrections official.
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The Associated Press was able to declare former President Donald Trump the winner in a string of Republican presidential primaries as initial vote results revealed no path for former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley to overtake him.
The AP called races across several states shortly after polls closed on Tuesday. In some places, Trump was leading Haley by margins of three- or four-to-one. In North Carolina, Trump was declared the winner at 8 p.m. EST (7 p.m. CST), or 30 minutes after polls closed, when some votes had been reported from more than half of the state’s 100 counties.
The initial results showed Trump tripling the number of votes Haley had received. In Oklahoma, Trump had an even larger lead over Haley when AP called the race.
The Associated Press declared President Joe Biden the winner of Democratic presidential contests in several states minutes after polls closed. Initial vote results showed him with overwhelming leads over the rest of the field.
In Virginia, Biden was declared the winner at 7:09 p.m. EST (6:07 p.m. CST) on Tuesday.
Although less than 1% of the vote had been tabulated in the commonwealth, Biden had received more than nine out of 10 votes cast.
Biden also was leading with about nine out of every 10 votes when AP called the Vermont contest. And in North Carolina, he was the only named candidate listed on the ballot. Initial vote results showed him easily leading “No preference.”
Biden won Iowa’s contest earlier Tuesday.
Associated Press
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