NEW YORK - US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has declared victory in the Kentucky primary while her opponent Senator Bernie Sanders won in Oregon.
Mrs Clinton remains the front-runner to secure the nomination in July, with a significant delegate lead. But Sanders, a left-wing politician, again resisted pressure to drop out of the race, saying he was "in until the last ballot is cast".
Mrs Clinton only narrowly won Kentucky. With most of the votes counted she was less than 0.5% ahead.
But Alison Lundergan Grimes, chairwoman of the Kentucky State Board of Elections, told CNN that unofficial results confirmed that Clinton would narrowly win the state's primary contest. Shortly afterwards, Mrs Clinton tweeted: "We just won Kentucky! Thanks to everyone who turned out. We're always stronger united."
With 99.8 percent of precincts reporting, Clinton led by about 1,800 votes. The margin of victory was less than one-half vote per precinct statewide.
Clinton, a former senator and secretary of state, was trying to recapture both her momentum across the nation and the Clinton family magic in Kentucky that made Bill Clinton the last Democrat to win the state in a presidential race and gave her a huge victory over Barack Obama in 2008.
Sanders was trying to continue chipping away at Hillary Clinton’s 767-delegate lead in the Democratic presidential race.
Republican voters didn't get to vote for a presidential nominee on Tuesday because the party chose Donald Trump in a March 5 caucus.
In addition to the 55 delegates that were up for grabs on Tuesday, the state’s Democrats also have five superdelegates, two of whom have already pledged their support to Clinton. Two others have not said who they would vote for, and a fifth superdelegate has not been named.
The race between Clinton and Sanders was the first truly contested Democratic primary in Kentucky since the 1988 Super Tuesday primaries. In 2008, Obama barely visited the state since he had essentially locked up the nomination.
Over the last two weeks this time, Clinton and former President Bill Clinton made numerous stops across the state, drawing small- to medium-size crowds.
Meanwhile, Sanders pulled out a comfortable single-digit win in Oregon, where he is likely to walk away with a solid block of delegates. The outcome will have negligible impact on either candidate's path to the nomination, thanks to Democrats' proportional delegate allocation system.
Instead, the most meaningful impact will likely be on the morale of Sanders supporters as he faces a virtually impossible path to winning the nomination.
Sanders' campaign still pledges to take their fight all the way the Democratic National Convention, and the chaos at the Nevada State Democratic Convention this weekend gave the party a taste of what could come.