Clinton’s strong Super Tuesday delegate count
Hillary Clinton will walk away with the majority of Super Tuesday delegates as she continues to march past Bernie Sanders toward the Democratic party’s presidential nomination.
The former secretary of State will win about 508 Super Tuesday delegates, according to a tally from The Associated Press, while Sanders will win about 342.
{mosads}Clinton won seven states — Arkansas, Alabama, Massachusetts, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia and Texas. Sanders won Vermont, Minnesota, Oklahoma and Colorado.
The delegate counts from those states will likely shift on the margins as votes are finalized — some delegate totals are based off of performances in congressional districts — but the vast majority will hold.
That allows Clinton to expand her delegate lead over Sanders, putting her in the driver’s seat for the Democratic nomination.
When added to Clinton’s overwhelming lead with superdelegates, party leaders with freedom to back whoever they choose, the AP estimate has Clinton leading with 1,052 delegates to Sanders’s 427 delegates.
A Democratic candidate needs 2,383 delegates to secure the nomination.
Superdelegates are free to change their minds, so Sanders could cut into that overall lead if he’s able to woo Clinton supporters to his side. But Clinton has now made that an even greater challenge for Sanders by winning the majority of the Super Tuesday states.
– Updated at 5:26 p.m.