Bernie Sanders collected three commanding victories on Saturday, winning the Democratic caucuses in Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii by considerable margins over frontrunner Hillary Clinton.
Sanders won Washington by roughly 73 percent to Clinton’s 27 percent, Alaska 81 percent to 18 percent, and Hawaii 70 percent to 30 percent. In all, Sanders banked 55 new delegates from Saturday’s contests, while Clinton gained 20:
Next up on the calendar for Democratic voters: Bernie could score an upset win in Wisconsin’s open primary on April 5. Then there’s a caucus in Wyoming on April 9, followed by the very big deal that is New York’s closed primary on April 19, when 247 delegates will be up for grabs.
Why did Sanders clean up on Saturday? On one hand, that’s because Sanders typically performs well in caucuses, while Hillary Clinton, dating back to 2008, doesn’t. So far this cycle, Clinton is losing to Sanders in caucuses by 26 percent, while in 2008 she lost caucuses to Obama by 34 percent. On the other hand, as the Washington Post’s Phillip Bump details, Washington and Alaska’s electorates were also predominantly non-black, continuing what has become a decisive trend:
When the composition of the black Democratic electorate has been below seven percent for states where Democratic primary exit polling in 2008 or 2016 was available, Clinton has lost by an average of 30 points this year. Over that percentage? She’s won by 26.
(Hawaii, interestingly, didn’t fit that mold, as it still overwhelmingly caucused for Sanders despite the state’s Democratic electorate being 13 percent black.)
In a separate post, Bump has some more bad news for Sanders supporters feeling bullish after Saturday:
There’s an argument that Sanders’s big victories on Saturday will help swing the upcoming states — the momentum idea and all that. Sure! Possible! When Sanders won New Hampshire by a mile, though, it was followed by Clinton crushing him in South Carolina. When he won Michigan against all odds … he then lost Illinois and North Carolina and Ohio in a five-state Clinton sweep. He lost Florida — where Clinton netted about 70 delegates alone. Demographics that have proven to be the more reliable predictors of victory than momentum.
And only three caucuses remain moving forward, none of which will yield many delegates, so Sanders’s big advantage in that area is finished, and few states with predominantly-white Democratic electorates remain either. The crucial stocks of remaining delegates will thus be awarded via diverse, big-state primaries, and Clinton has been beating Sanders in those contest by over 23 percent so far this year.
