Sanders, Biden in virtual tie for Democratic primary

SPOKANE – Presidential hopefuls Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders dueled each other to a virtual tie in Washington’s Democratic primary Tuesday night.

At press time, Sanders held a slim 2,084 vote led over the former vice president, garnering 32.70percent of the statewide vote to Biden’s 32.49 percent. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg received 11.05 percent of the ballots cast, 126,093 even though he suspended his campaign last week.

In Spokane County, the results were almost exactly the opposite, with Biden holding a 248 vote lead, receiving 19,435 votes (31.19 percent) to Sanders’ 19,207 votes (30.82) percent. Bloomberg was receiving 15.09 percent, or 9,401 votes.

On the Republican side, President Donald Trump was running unopposed an as expected receiving the lion’s share of the votes, garnering 523,409 of 531,271ballots cast statewide and 54,631 of 55,322 in Spokane County, running at 98.75 percent.

A total of 1,019,709 votes were cast statewide for 13 Democratic candidates, of which only Biden, Sanders and Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard remain in the race.

Overall voter turnout in Spokane County was running 35.07 percent, just ahead of the 33.97 percent statewide figure.

John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].

Editor's note: This story was updated at 9:19 p.m. to reflect the final numbers for the evening after Klickitat and Kittitas counties finally reported their vote tallies.

Author Bio

John McCallum, Retired editor

John McCallum is an award-winning journalist who retired from Cheney Free Press after more than 20 years. He received 10 Washington Newspaper Publisher Association awards for journalism and photography, including first place awards for Best Investigative, Best News and back-to-back awards in Best Breaking News categories.

 

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