Hillary Clinton Takes Decisive Lead Over Bernie Sanders in Delegate Count, Popular Vote

Hillary Clinton Appears To Hit Delegate Count Needed To Clinch | The View
June 8, 2016 8:33 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON Hillary Clinton prevailed in the Democratic presidential primary campaign with commanding leads in both the popular vote and delegate count, capping off the race against Bernie Sanders Tuesday evening with a win in delegate-rich California.

Competing in more than 50 contests since February, Mrs. Clinton has amassed a majority in the race for delegates. Taking into account the six contests on Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton has at least 2,755 delegates to 1,852 delegates for Mr. Sanders, according to an Associated Press countenough to for her to declare victory near the end of the primary season. It takes 2,383 delegates to win the Democratic nomination.

Just the District of Columbia has yet to vote, where only 20 delegates are at stake in the citys June 14 primary. Mr. Sanders has vowed to remain in the race until after the D.C. primary.

Democrats divide up their delegates into pledged delegates, who are elected in caucuses and primaries, and unpledged superdelegates, or Democratic Party insiders who are free to cast a vote for any candidate at the partys July convention.

The exact number of pledged delegates from Tuesdays contests wont be known until after vote counting is finished in California.

Mrs. Clinton dominated Mr. Sanders by three of the metrics needed to win a primary campaign: beating Mr. Sanders handily in the popular vote, amassing nearly 400 more pledged delegate than the Vermont Senator and using her deep ties to the Democratic Party establishment to lock up many superdelegates early in the process.

A vote tally compiled by Real Clear Politics gave her a lead of more than 3 million in the popular vote, though some caucuses don"t give vote tallies.

In pledged delegates, three networks projected she would receive an outright majority.

She also dominated in the superdelegate battle, with nearly 600 publicly supporting her. Mr. Sanders has drawn only 48 superdelegates and has made no inroads in convincing her backers to switch sides.

The former secretary of state became the presumptive Democratic nominee this week ahead of the six Tuesday primaries after the Associated Press declared she had garnered enough support from the unpledged superdelegates to secure the nomination.The states voting Tuesday night were California, New Jersey, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota.

The Sanders campaign said it would continue to try to sway superdelegates ahead of the Democratic convention.

Secretary Clinton does not have and will not have the requisite number of pledged delegates to secure the nomination. She will be dependent on superdelegates who don"t vote until July 25 and who can change their minds between now and then, Sanders campaign communications director Michael Briggs said.

Our job from now until the convention is to convince those superdelegates that Bernie is by far the strongest candidate against Donald Trump, he added.

Mrs. Clinton has built a much more commanding lead over Mr. Sanders than in the last contested Democratic primary campaign in 2008, when President Barack Obama emerged as the winner.

By the end of the final set of primaries in the 2008 race, Mr. Obama led Mrs. Clinton by about 125 pledged delegates. He had 389 superdelegates supporting him at the close of the primary season.

Write to Byron Tau at byron.tau@wsj.com

Source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/hillary-clinton-takes-decisive-lead-over-bernie-sanders-in-delegate-count-popular-vote-1465389182