Presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) rebuffed calls to drop out of the race, and won two out of three contests Tuesday night as the primary calendar started its shift to the West.
Sanders trounced the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the Idaho and Utah caucuses, winning the former 78-21 percent. With nearly all the votes counted in Utah, Sanders is up 60 points.
Clinton did pick up a sizeable win in the Arizona primary, where she bested Sanders 58-40 percent. But the Democratic Socialist’s netted the most delegates on the night, allowing him to cut slightly into Clinton’s large delegate lead. According to the New York Times, Clinton is now up on Sanders in pledged delegates 1,214 to 901. It takes 2,383 to secure the nomination.
“When we began this campaign we were considered a fringe candidate,” Sanders told supporters at a rally in San Diego, Calif. Tuesday night. “Months and months later, we have now won ten primaries and caucuses, and we’re going to win a couple more tonight.”
Although the odds are long, the Sanders campaign is relying on a slate of Western states to give their candidate big chunks of delegates over the next few weeks, with contests in Alaska, Hawaii, Washington State, and Wyoming.
On the GOP side, Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) split states. The businessman easily won Arizona by 22 points, but was beaten badly by Cruz in Utah. The senator nabbed 69 percent of the vote. Trump fells to third in the state, behind Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio), but still managed to grow his overall delegate lead on Tuesday night. He’s now up 738 to 463 over Cruz, but still needs roughly 500 more delegates to win the nomination.
Although smart betters’ money is likely on both Clinton and Trump to secure their respective party’s nominations, a new CBS/New York Times poll shows how dissatisfied the American electorate would be with those choices. According to the survey, 57 percent of voters view Trump unfavorably. For Clinton, that number is 52 percent. If nominated, both candidates would be the most unfavorable candidates in a general election match-up since polling on the issue began in 1984.
Sanders, meanwhile, remains the most favorable candidate in the race. According to a Morning Consult survey this week, 51 percent of voters view the insurgent candidate favorably—numbers that continue to rise as the election season progresses.
