Hillary Clinton’s road to running for the Democrats remains long and rocky. On Wednesday night, the ex-Secretary of State lost the West Virginia area code to Bernie Sanders. According to the US media, the Vermont Senator was unassailable against Clinton.
Since the delegates of the state for the entire race are distributed proportionally of the votes won, Sanders could hardly make up ground against Clinton. In West Virginia there were only 29 delegates in total. Clinton is still several hundred delegate votes ahead of her competitor.
Nevertheless, defeats in individual states make Clinton’s election campaign and image a problem. In the coal state of West Virginia, criticism of the mining industry hurt her. With his victories, Sanders is also keeping the pressure on Clinton programmatically.
Donald Trump won the Republican elections in West Virginia and the state of Nebraska. He has no opponent since his rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich withdrew after the recent Indiana primary. Nevertheless, the two dropouts together got low double-digit approval on Tuesday. The Democrats voted in Nebraska back in March.
Trump is approaching the threshold of 1237 with the delegates won on Tuesday: This is the majority of all delegates who have to be reached over months in the primary elections of all states in order to secure the candidacy. The controversial New York billionaire and political career changer Trump was already the likely presidential candidate of the Republicans before this election Tuesday. Cruz, Senator from Texas, ruled out Tuesday from re-entering the White House race as an independent candidate.
Sanders would have to bring around 66 percent of the remaining delegates
For Sanders, who describes himself as a democratic socialist, the race for his party’s candidacy remains mathematically almost hopeless. He would have to get around 66 percent of all delegates in the remaining election to catch up with Clinton. In addition, he would have to pull the majority of the so-called super delegates to his side. Most of these have already declared that they want to vote for Clinton.
Clinton’s problem and Sanders’ drive are also new polls in which Sanders clearly does better in a direct comparison with Donald Trump. Trump takes full advantage of the Democrats’ wrestling. He said Clinton couldn’t even beat a single competitor within the party. The next election day is the coming Tuesday. Both parties are going to vote in Oregon, while in Kentucky only the Democrats are voting. (dpa)
–
