AP count: Clinton has delegates to win Democratic nomination

Hillary Clinton has commitments from the number of delegates needed to become the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for president, and will be first woman to top the ticket of a major US political party. A former senator and USA secretary of state, Clinton would be the first woman to ever be the presidential candidate of a major political party in the country’s 239-year history.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (L) listens to US President Barack Obama speak during a meeting with members of his cabinet at the White House in Washington November 28, 2012.

New Jersey, where 142 delegates are at play, and where Clinton leads in recent state polls, is expected to carry the former secretary of state over the party’s 2,383 delegate threshold, giving her a critical victory to tout hours before polls close on the West coast. But 15 percent of the total delegate pool is made up of superdelegates – current and former elected officials and party activists who aren’t bound to vote for the candidate selected by voters in their home state’s primary.

With a series primary votes on Tuesday that could see Clinton all but seal the party nomination, the White House refused to rule out an endorsement within days. While superdelegates can change their minds, those counted in Clinton’s tally have unequivocally told the AP they will support her at the party’s summer convention.

Both Sanders and Clinton have pledged to help as the island’s government tries to restructure $70 billion worth of public debt that the governor has said is unpayable.

Although she has won more votes and earned the support of more delegates to the Democratic National Convention in July, she has shied away from calling on Sanders to drop out of the contest.

Clinton outpaced Sanders in winning new superdelegate endorsements even after his string of primary and caucus wins in May. In a statement, his spokesman Michael Briggs said, “Our job from now until the convention is to convince those superdelegates that Bernie is by far the strongest candidate against Donald Trump”. Even a strong showing for Sanders in California and elsewhere would likely still leave him well short in the delegate count, but it could give him more motivation to fight on to the Democratic convention in July.

The former first lady, USA senator and secretary of state spoke to supporters at a raucous event in Brooklyn, New York, and placed her achievement in the context of the women’s rights movement. Her supporters have said Sanders should look at that as a road map for his own exit from this year’s race.

Hillary Clinton will square off against Donald Trump in the November 8 U.S. presidential election.

Montana, New Mexico, and South Dakota also will hold primaries Tuesday, with Clinton holding a statistical edge over Sanders in four of the five states, Abramowitz said.

But while Trump has largely been able to unite the Republican Party despite major ideological rifts with party leaders, Clinton risks alienating Sanders and his supporters by dismissing a campaign that far exceeded its quixotic beginning in fundraising and voter enthusiasm. Earlier on Monday, Clinton called for party unity, suggesting it was time for Sanders, who only joined the Democratic party last year after years as an independent, to abandon his hard-fought challenge. What’s more, Obama then led among pledged delegates even when superdelegates weren’t included in the total count. Decisive wins in Southern states on Super Tuesday and a sweep of March 15 contests gave her a significant delegate lead, which became insurmountable by the end of April after big victories in NY and in the Northeast. And on the Republican side, there was reason to think they might: Trump was disliked by party insiders and wouldn’t have a majority of votes from his party’s voters.

“We’re judged by our words and our deeds, not our race, not our ethnicity, not our religion”, she said Saturday in Oxnard, California. “So it is time to judge Donald Trump by his words and his deeds. And I believe that his words and his deeds disqualify him from being president of the United States”.