Bernie Sanders Wins Hawaii Caucuses

Sun Mar 27, 2016 9:45AM
USA Today

US Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has won the Democratic caucuses in Hawaii, trouncing his rival Hillary Clinton there.

The victory for Sanders on Saturday night came after the Vermont senator gained 71 percent support in Hawaii, where 25 delegates were in play, as opposed to 29 percent for Clinton, according to US major media outlets.

This comes on the heels of his wins in Washington and Alaska where he won 72 and 82 percent of the vote respectively on Saturday.

“We knew from day one that politically we were going to have a hard time in the Deep South,” Sanders told supporters at a rally in Madison, Wis., late Saturday afternoon. “But we knew things were going to improve when we headed west.”

Sanders has often pointed to contrast between himself and Clinton on the campaign trail, calling himself a “Democratic socialist.”

Despite his wins, Sanders is far behind Clinton in the quest for the 2,382 delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination.

Due to Clinton’s current lead — 1,223 pledged delegates to 920 for Sanders — and because Democratic convention delegates are distributed proportionally to the primary results, Sanders will have to win upcoming contests by very large margins to catch up.

“I have, as of now, gotten more votes than anybody else, including Donald Trump. I have gotten 2.6 million more votes than Bernie Sanders,” Clinton said while campaigning on Tuesday in Washington.

She said she had “a bigger lead in pledged delegates, the ones you win from people voting, than Barack Obama had at this time in 2008.”