Sen. Bernie Sanders snagged nearly 50 delegates in Washington state on Saturday, but didn’t dent his opponent’s overall lead.
According to district-level data obtained by the Associated Press, Sanders picked up 49 delegates, while Hillary Clinton received 18. Back in March, Sanders won Washington state’s caucuses by a significant margin.
The delegate count in Washington state was announced on the same day Clinton won Guam’s caucuses with 60 percent support to Sanders’ 40 percent. Only seven pledged delegates were up for grabs in the U.S. territory; Clinton picked up four delegates, and Sanders got three.
The state of the Democratic primary remains unchanged. Clinton leads Sanders by a wide margin according to the latest AP tally, and has the Democratic nomination essentially in hand. With 2,228 delegates, the former secretary of state is just 155 delegates shy of clinching the nomination. Sanders meanwhile has 1,454 delegates.
Clinton’s advantages in the race include overwhelming support from superdelegates, party officials unbound to any candidate. She also leads among pledged delegates and has far outpaced the Vermont senator in primary votes received.
Sanders will need to win nearly 66 percent of all remaining pledged delegates in the primary in order to catch Clinton. He indicated last week that he will work to sway superdelegates to switch to his side and that the Democratic Party’s convention in July will be a “contested convention.” But even if he convinced all the superdelegates to back him, Clinton would still be on pace to capture the nomination.
