Allen Eyestone/ZUMA
Hillary Clinton was declared the projected winner of Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primary in Arizona by the major networks. The win is the latest in a string of victories for the former secretary of state over her opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, that has allowed her to build a substantial lead in pledged delegates. Sanders’ prospects for closing that gap are looking dimmer by the day.
Clinton was far ahead of Sanders in pledged delegates heading into Tuesday, having amassed 1,163 delegates to Sanders’ 844. And those figures don’t include the Democrats’ controversial superdelegates, who have overwhelmingly pledged their support to Clinton. Since the Democrats award delegates proportionally in every state—unlike on the Republican side, where some states, including Arizona, allocate delegates on a winner-take-all basis—Sanders would need to win by large margins in the remaining states to catch up with Clinton.
To cast their ballots, people had to stand in long lines at polling sites across Arizona, Idaho, and Utah. The Associated Press reported that in Maricopa County, Arizona, a cutback in the number of voting sites—from 200 in 2012 to 60 today—resulted in long wait times.
