Hillary Clinton won the primary in Puerto Rico on Sunday and the caucus in the U.S. Virgin Islands on Saturday, which makes her closer to winning the Democratic presidential nomination.
The former First lady, Senator and Secretary of State is just 26 delegates shy of reaching the required 2,383 delegates needed to clinch the nomination. Based on CNN’s delegate count, she already obtained total of 2357 delegates (1,810 pledged and 547 superdelegates).
The Democratic presidential front-runner aims to seal the contest this week as six states are scheduled to conduct this primary on Tuesday including California, which offers the biggest prize of 475 pledged delegates.
The Clinton campaign is hoping to end the Democratic primary contest early on Tuesday with a victory in New Jersey with 126 pledged delegates up for grabs. A CBS survey shows that 61% of Democratic voters support Clinton compared with 34% for Senator Bernie Sanders. That is a double-digit lead.
The other states holding Democratic primaries are Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota.
Sanders to keep fighting until the convention
Despite the fact that Clinton is so close to winning the nomination, Sen. Sanders vowed to keep fighting until the Democratic national convention. He recently stated that he would convince super delegates to shift their support to him.
Sanders said, “The media is in error when they lump superdelegates with pledged delegates. Pledged delegates are real. Hillary Clinton will not have the requisite number of pledged delegates to win the Democratic nomination at the end of the nominating process on June 14. Won’t happen. She will be dependent on superdelegates.”
“The Democratic National Convention will be a contested convention,” he said.
On the other hand, Clinton said, “After Tuesday I am going to do everything I can do to reach out and try to unify the Democratic Party and I expect Sanders to do the same.”
Democrats want Clinton to be their nominee
California Governor Jerry Brown endorsed Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. He said, “I have decided to cast my vote for Hillary Clinton because I believe this is the only path forward to win the presidency and stop the dangerous candidacy of Donald Trump.”
Brown noted that the former Secretary of State’s lead against Sanders (more than 3 million more votes and hundreds more delegates) are insurmountable, which shows that “Democrats want her as their nominee.”
Anthony Salvanto, the news director of elections at CBS said the latest survey shows that 71% of Democrats want Sanders to support Clinton after the primaries.
Salvanto said, “The prospect of facing Donald Trump is having some unifying effect, especially among Sanders voters, many of whom say they would back Hillary Clinton in November if she is the nominee.”
