Bernie Sanders is set to take more than 50 percent of the vote combined in Oregon and Kentucky, continuing to rack up support despite Hillary Clinton’s attempted pivot to the general election.
With 77 percent of the vote reported Tuesday morning, Sanders led Clinton by more than 48,000 votes in the Beaver State, adding up to a 55 to 45 percent lead. Clinton narrowly escaped Sanders in Kentucky, edging him by not even 2,000 votes with 99 percent of the commonwealth reporting.
The positive results Tuesday for the Vermont senator left him and his supporters feeling as emboldened as ever, with Sanders vowing at a campaign event in California, “We are in this until the last ballot is counted … and then we’re going to take that fight to Philadelphia.”
California, where Clinton is favored, is one of a handful of states remaining on the calendar, and it’s a few weeks until it arrives. Until then, her backers are warning her not to get “overconfident,” as former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson cautioned, and fight for votes through the end of the primary.
It’s all but certain that the Sanders campaign won’t go quietly, not after a raucous Democratic convention in Nevada over the weekend and a strong showing from the challenger in May. Kentucky is Clinton’s only victory this month, a far cry from her strong finish in April when she captured several states in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.
Although Sanders is almost mathematically eliminated from securing the delegates needed to win the nomination—after Tuesday, Clinton is 96 percent of the way there—his continued victories state-by-state has complicated Clinton’s efforts to shift her focus to Donald Trump. Politico has more:
There’s also the irony that it’s actually the Democrats that have failed to unify behind their presumptive nominee, which Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus gloated about in a statement.
“While Republicans move toward unifying the party for the general election, Hillary Clinton remains bogged down in a nasty, protracted primary fight and will have to rely on a rigged system of superdelegates to get across the finish line in Philadelphia,” he said in a statement.
