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West Virginia primary voters and the Democrats

After Ryan said last week he was not ready to endorse Trump, the presumptive nominee said he would have to decide whether he still wanted Ryan to preside over the party’s July convention.

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After former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ran off a series of victories in Northeast states last month, politics watchers all agreed that Sanders’ long-shot campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination had finally run aground.

Here’s where it gets really weird: fully 39 percent of Sanders’s supporters said they would vote for Trump over Sanders in a hypothetical general election matchup. Ben Sasse of Nebraska is among those who have said outright he will not vote for Trump in November.

Trump wore a hard hat at a rally in West Virginia last week and mocked Clinton over saying in March that “we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business” with alternative sources of energy. He has taunted Clinton in recent days, saying she “can’t close the deal”. But the comments were fresh on the mind of Democrats heading to the polls Tuesday.

“She has been in the public eye for decades, served in high office, and now she’s in a dead heat with Trump, in a race that everyone thought she would win easily”, said Carney, who has been critical of Trump.

“She’s against coal, and that’s what’s kept West Virginia going”, he said. A victory by Sanders over Clinton on Tuesday in West Virginia could boost his campaign in advance of June 7 contests in which almost 700 delegates are at stake, including 475 in California, where Sanders is now focusing his efforts. Clinton was due to visit a family health center in Louisville to unveil a proposal to increase federal subsidies so that no family pays more than 10 percent of its income for child care. But the loss is still a bad sign coming at a bad time for Clinton.

“Clinton realized the damage that could be done to the party – and perhaps herself – so she didn’t”, the Washington Post noted of her decision not to push for a contested convention then. That’s according to early findings from exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Research. But a trio of Quinnipiac University polls in key November battlegrounds showed tighter races.

The businessman said he’ll spend “limited” money on data operations to identify and track potential voters and to model various turnout scenarios that could give him the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency.

The left-wing senator from Vermont was declared the victor after capturing more than 51pc of the vote to Mrs Clinton’s 36pc, with around three-quarters of the ballots counted.

“There is no question about which campaign is energizing the American people”, Sanders said. “If you want the strongest candidate to defeat Donald Trump, that’s us”.

Democratic US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders addresses a town hall campaign event at the Five Loaves and Two Fishes Food Bank in Welch, West Virginia, U.S., May 5, 2016.

Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, is running the vice presidential vetting effort “with a group”, Trump said, that includes former competitor Ben Carson and himself. “And it happened in this race far earlier than it did in ’08”.

Given Clinton’s own experience in Sanders’ position, she recognizes the need to treat both Sanders and the remaining Democratic voters with respect, Elleithee said.

But Mr Trump faces a huge task in trying to get the Republican party behind him, as doubts persist about his substance and style.

Clinton seemed to get a well-timed boost Tuesday from one prominent Democrat, Vice President Joe Biden.

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“I hardly believe that Hillary Clinton is in any place to be giving a critique on transparency”, he said. “And I feel confident that she’ll be the next president”, he told ABC News.

S US Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaks during a rally in Atlantic City New Jersey. Enlarge