Cornell Clayton
Cornell Clayton

Campaigning: Results Only Impact Republican Race as Democrats Use Caucus System to Appoint Delegates

Donald Trump handily won Washington state’s Republican presidential primary Tuesday, even as he shared the ballot with three other candidates who had already dropped out of the contest.

Republicans in Washington state will allocate all 44 delegates to their national convention based on the primary results.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton defeated Bernie Sanders. She was winning 54 percent to 46 percent in early returns; however the results don’t affect the allocation of delegates.

Washington has both a presidential primary and a caucus system, but Democrats will ignore the primary results, having chosen to keep using the party caucus system to allocate their delegates. Sanders handily won the Democratic caucuses in March. Following the congressional district caucuses over the weekend, a spokesman for the state Democratic Party said 74 delegates will go to Sanders and 27 to Clinton.

Cornell Clayton, director of the Foley Institute for Public Policy at Washington State University, said even though the Democratic primary is nothing more than a poll, there’s still value for the campaign that prevails.

“They’re going to tout this as the will of the people,” he said.

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