New Jersey and California award the two largest delegate prizes in a slate of states that also includes New Mexico, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota. “But we’re not going to let that happen”. “We do not want to send a message that anybody’s vote doesn’t count”.
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Earlier on Monday, Clinton reflected emotionally about being on the cusp of the Democratic nomination, a feat that would make her the first female nominee for a major political party. Yesterday, she pointed to her 2008 decision to unite the party and said Democrats needed to do the same to take on presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.
Lifted by a big win in Puerto Rico and a burst of late support from Democratic superdelegates, Hillary Clinton has commitments from the number of delegates needed to become the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for president.
Clinton has 1,812 pledged delegates won in primaries and caucuses.
What’s more, Clinton’s current pledged-delegate lead (291) is bigger than what Obama had over her OVERALL (238.5). Bernie Sanders speaks to the media during a press conference Monday in California. Watch turnout: Sanders says heavy traffic would bode well for him, especially among young voters. But Clinton has edged him out, particularly among older voters, with a more pragmatic campaign focused on building on President Barack Obama’s policies.
Should she win the election in November this year – and this is a big “if” at this stage – a glass ceiling in United States public life would have crashed. “Honestly he seems a lot more genuine to me”, he said. “The problem is that I think Republicans would really unify … even more against him”.
Historically, a majority of Democratic superdelegates have cast their support to the first-place finisher to get that candidate over the line for the nomination. Clinton has won three million more votes than Sanders and is well ahead in the pledged delegate count.
In practice, superdelegates who have announced their intention are unlikely to change their minds. For that reason, the DNC has echoed the Sanders campaign, saying the superdelegates should not be counted until they actually vote at the Philadelphia convention.
Mr Obama telephoned Mr Sanders on Sunday, AP said.
As Rachel explained on the show last night, the delegate math is relatively straightforward: there are a total of 4,765 delegates available, so the first candidate to reach 2,383 delegates earns the nomination.
Superdelegates are the party insiders and officials free to support whichever candidate they want.
On Tuesday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi – who was the first woman speaker of the House of Representatives and is a California superdelegate this year – formally endorsed Clinton. While the content of the call is unknown, Sanders did appear to slightly soften his rhetoric the next day, saying he would return to Vermont after the California contest and “assess where we are”.
Whether or not Sanders supporters will ultimately back Clinton is an open question. His job approval was over 50 per cent in a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll and has been on the rise in 2016.
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“When the mainstream media calls the polls, calls the election, because they’re already planning to do it to suppress the vote in California, we will fight on”, Nina Turner, a former OH state senator and one of Sanders’ top surrogates, said at a Monday night campaign rally.
