Mr Donald Trump, who drove his remaining competitors from the race last week, was declared the victor in Tuesday’s (May 10) Republican primary in West Virginia, the Associated Press reported, and was expected to formally pick up Nebraska too. Last week we won a really great victory in indiana and tonight it appears that we have won a big big victory in West Virginia.
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For Bernie and Jane Sanders, the revolution continues, despite the odds.
“Our message to the Democratic delegates who will be assembling in Philadelphia is, while we may have many disagreements with Secretary Clinton, there is one area (where) we agree”.
Do Clinton’s coal comments hurt?
Still, most of the most attention was on the Democratic side of the race Tuesday with Clinton still unable to emphatically snuff out the Sanders challenge so that she can turn her full fire on Trump. The other 31 delegates in West Virginia are elected directly by voters. In a rally Sunday night in Piscataway, N.J., Sanders pledged to continue campaigning until the final voting in the District of Columbia on June 14. But county density also correlates somewhat to population density – there simply aren’t a lot of voters in West Virginia and Montana.
Does Sanders pick up momentum?
But Trump still does not have some senior Republicans on board for his own campaign after primary election battles in which he promised to build a wall on the Mexican border to halt illegal immigration, and temporarily ban Muslims from entering the United States.
Sanders put the Democratic National Committee on notice Friday, warning it not to stack the convention’s standing committees with Clinton supporters. But where Trump has wasted no time in sticking it to Clinton, Sanders’ victory overnight means that Clinton will be pulling her punches whilst the Democrat race remains alive, however marginally.
Clinton’s campaign has increasingly set its sights on Trump, even as Sanders has won recent primaries.
Will Republicans cast a protest vote?
While Trump’s victory was all but assured, analysts will surely watch turnout rates and protest votes for candidates no longer in the running as a gauge of the presumptive nominee’s ability to pull together a fractured GOP. Superdelegates are unbound and may pledge their support to any candidate, a lesson Clinton learned the hard way in 2008 when they shifted their support at the last minute to then-U.S. Sen. And it’s good for whoever becomes the nominee because it ensures they have a reason to be out campaigning and working to earn votes.
Nebraska will be an especially interesting test case.
The self-professed democratic socialist decisively won his second state victory in a row adding to his win in IN last week, stealing the momentum from the former secretary of state but still facing a slim chance of closing Mrs Clinton’s comfortable lead among delegates. Sasse won his Senate seat in 2014 with 65% of the vote.
Trump has cleared the once-overflowing field of Republican opponents, setting him up for easy wins from here on out. West Virginia has one of the highest unemployment rates in country. Sanders had 1,454 delegates, including 39 superdelegates. After all, Donald Trump has wasted no time in turning his fire on Clinton.
Trump has been viewed unfavorably by upwards of two-thirds of women in general election polling, but has done marginally better with women in the Republican electorate. He also won every income bracket in the primary. His chances in November will improve should he be able to close that gender gap.
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Earlier, Trump unveiled a new nickname for Sanders, referring to him as “Crazy Bernie” in a pair of tweets.
