- Joe Biden has won the Washington primary, officially sweeping five out of the six primary contests that took place on March 10.
- Washington votes almost entirely by mail, meaning their results take longer on average to count.
- We'll have up-to-the-minute live vote counts and results happening in real-time updating automatically when more results come in.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
With Biden's Washington win, he's officially swept five of the six contests that took place on March 10. See full results here.
Washington Democratic primary results:
Catch up on live coverage from the primary:
Head over to our main live results post to catch up on the full results of the March 10 primaries.
Primary:
- Biden gets three huge victories of the night in the Mississippi, Missouri, and Michigan Democratic primaries, the latter of which Sanders narrowly won in his 2016 presidential bid.
- Sanders' getting destroyed in Michigan, a state he narrowly won in 2016, is a troubling sign for his campaign — Biden crushed Bernie in Michigan, which could be the beginning of the end for the Vermont senator
- It was a fairly early call for Joe Biden in Missouri, but he was projected to sweep in every district — and he delivered.
- Coronavirus prompts Biden and Sanders to scrap rally plans — Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden cancel election night rallies in Ohio over coronavirus concerns
Here's how Democrats will elect their presidential nominee over the next several months
What's at stake in the primary?
Washington allocates 89 pledged delegates to the Democratic national convention, making up a little over 2% of all delegates allocated throughout the nomination process. Out of Washington's delegates, 58 are allocated at the district level with the other 31 at-large and PLEO delegates allocated based on the results of the statewide vote.
As in most other states, candidates must earn over the minimum threshold of 15% of the vote in a given district or statewide to earn any delegates out of Washington.
In March 2016, Sanders overwhelmingly beat Clinton in the state's caucuses, winning 72% of state legislative district delegates compared to 27% for Clinton. But in a non-binding primary election that Washington held about three months later in June, Clinton ended up handily defeating Sanders. Since 2016, Washington has switched from a party-run caucus to a primary conducted by mail.
Under Washington's current election system, voters receive their ballots in the mail 18 days before an election. They can either mail in their ballots, postmarked no later than election day, or drop ballots off in person at their local election office by 8 p.m. local time, or 11 p.m. ET.
Who did the polling say was ahead?
FiveThirtyEight's average of the latest polling data showed former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders polling within just a few percentage points of each other in Washington, with Biden earning 40% support on average compared to 36% support for Sanders in recent polls of the state.
In FiveThirtyEight's primary election forecast, Biden had a 3 in 5 (61%) chance of winning the most pledged delegates from Washington compared to a 2 in 5 (39%) chance for Sanders.
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