Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders emerged triumphant in the Hawaii, Alaska and Washington state caucuses on Saturday, the Associated Press reports.
Sanders handily defeated Clinton in the Alaska and Washington state contests, and in the early hours of Sunday morning, vote totals for Hawaii made it a clean sweep for the Vermont senator. The AP reported that, with 88 percent of precincts reporting, Sanders led Clinton by about 40 points (70.6 percent to 29.2 percent).
However, as The AP noted earlier, even with the victories, his competitor in the race, Hillary Clinton, still holds a strong lead in delegates, with The AP putting the gap between the two in the “several hundreds” range.
Even so, at a campaign rally in Wisconsin on Saturday, Sanders said the Washington state win was evidence of “momentum” for his campaign.
“We just won the state of Washington — that is what momentum is about,” Sanders said. “Don’t let anybody tell you we can’t win the nomination or we can’t win the general election. We’re going to do both of those things.”
According to The AP, Clinton didn’t mount much of a campaign in the three states where Democrats voted Saturday, with the former secretary of state opting to focus on the upcoming April 19 showdown in New York.