Based on exit polls, Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain will win the state of West Virginia, according to CBS News and Fox News.

The Associated Press and other news organizations did not call the state for McCain.

Polls closed in the state at 7:30 p.m., and immediately, CBS News declared McCain the winner of West Virginia’s five electoral votes. Fox followed a couple of minutes later.

Throughout the race, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama had trailed the Republican senator from Arizona. Neither candidate spent much time in the state; McCain made a couple of brief appearances.

This marks the third straight presidential election that West Virginians have picked a Republican for president, after years of voting Democratic for the nation’s highest office.

In the state’s Democratic primaries in May, Obama was defeated by a 2-1 margin by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

-WVGazette.com