After many hard-fought months, the presidential primary season effectively drew to a close on Tuesday with the last major spate of contests.
Donald Trump was already the presumptive Republican nominee since there was no opponents remaining.Hillary Clinton was awarded that mantle for the Democrats on Monday night based on NBC’s count of both pledged and so-called “super” delegates. But voters in California,New Jersey,New Mexico,North Dakota,Montana and South Dakota took to the polls on Tuesday to cast their votes for Clinton or her last remaining opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
News projected that Clinton would win the New Jersey and New Mexico primaries. In addition, she was the apparent winner in South Dakota. In North Dakota and Montana, meanwhile, Sanders was the projected winner.
But even without projected winners in those races, NBC made a major announcement just as California’s results first started rolling in. According to initial reports an allocation of 140 pledged delegates each to Clinton and Sanders. This gave Clinton 2,043 pledged delegates, guaranteeing that she will have an outright pledged delegate majority over Sanders no matter what else happens.
At one point in the race, Sanders’ campaign had suggested that the pledged delegate count was the most important metric for a fair Democratic nomination. Sanders pledged late Tuesday (Pacific time) to “continue the fight” into next week for the D.C. primary, and then on to the Democratic convention in Philadelphia.