Republican nominee Donald Trump beats rival Hillary Clinton to win the race in Kentucky.

Republican nominee Donald Trump won the presidential race in the US state of Kentucky, which holds eight electoral votes.

Trump won 66 percent of the vote in the state, while Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton got 29 percent.

The Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson won 3 percent of the vote.

Kentucky, officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is in the east south-central region of the US which has voted for the Republican candidate in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections.

As of October 2016, 51 percent of the state’s voters were officially registered as Democrats, 40 percent were registered Republican, and 8 percent were registered with some other political party or as independents.

Despite this, the state often supports Republican candidates for federal offices.

From 1964 through to 2004, Kentucky voted for the eventual winner of the US presidential election.

In the 2008 election, however, the state lost its bellwether status when John McCain, who won Kentucky, lost the national popular and electoral vote to Barack Obama.