While its pool of delegates is small, the island chain took on more importance as Mrs Clinton gets closer to clinching the nomination.
Advertisement
Sanders has been barnstorming California, hoping for a miracle in which he wins the remaining contests and many so-called super-delegates, senior party figures who can vote at the party convention for whomever they choose, switch alliances and support him.
Pollsters found Clinton topping Sanders among voters ages 45 and older (63 percent to 33 percent), self-identified Democrats (57 percent to 40 percent), women (54 percent to 41 percent), past Democratic voters (53 percent to 42 percent) and whites (51 percent to 46 percent).
It was nearly as big a margin as Barack Obama had in 2008, when he beat Mrs Clinton by 90 to 8%.
Though the Clinton campaign initially put fewer resources than Sanders into California, they abruptly began flooding the zone over the past week.
A narrow win in California would not be enough for Bernie Sanders to erase Hillary Clinton’s wide lead in delegates, but there are signs that it could turn the tide in the race.
On Saturday, Sanders said he would try to woo Clinton’s superdelegates in an effort to swing the nomination his way at the Democratic convention. “If our president doesn’t believe in the rule of law, doesn’t believe in our constitution with a separation of power with an independent judiciary, that is one of the most risky signals that we are dealing with somebody who is a demagogue”, she told local KABC-TV. It could also give way to a giant shift at this summer’s Democratic National Convention, Schoen wrote.
Yet that decision isn’t entirely his alone.
Sanders criticized the media for accounting for superdelegates when talking about Clinton’s lead in the race, saying that their backing of a candidate is fluid and those who support Clinton now have six weeks before they actually cast their votes. “And so we need all of you to join with the hundreds of thousands of Californians who have already voted”, Clinton said.
“Over the past months, I have hear the word “likability” used so often”, Field exclaimed.
But Sanders seemed an afterthought to a confident Clinton as she campaigned this week in California, hitting hard at her likely general election rival, Donald Trump, instead, and telling supporters Friday that “if all goes well, I will have the great honor as of Tuesday to be the Democratic nominee for president”. Americans are just as likely to say Trump can get things done as to say this about Clinton, Gallup found.
California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota hold their primaries on Tuesday.
Sanders is mounting a last stand in the progressive bastion of California, which holds its primary next week, to prove – against all odds – that he can defeat Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic standard-bearer in a match-up against Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee.
Advertisement
AP Photo/John MinchilloDemocratic presidential candidate Sen.
