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Sanders, Trump take May 10 primaries
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Presidential election in Nebraska, 2016 and Presidential election in West Virginia, 2016
 Date: November 8, 2016 |
Winner: Donald Trump (R) Hillary Clinton (D) • Jill Stein (G) • Gary Johnson (L) • Vice presidential candidates |
Important dates • Nominating process • Ballotpedia's 2016 Battleground Poll • Polls • Debates • Presidential election by state • Ratings and scorecards |
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This article covering the 2016 presidential election was written outside the scope of Ballotpedia's encyclopedic coverage and does not fall under our neutrality policy or style guidelines. It is preserved as it was originally written. For our encyclopedic coverage of the 2016 election, click here.
May 11, 2016
Vermont Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders and Republican billionaire Donald Trump won their respective party primaries in West Virginia. Trump also captured the Nebraska GOP primary.
But the only race where there was still a campaign was in the Democratic contest, and Sanders’ West Virginia victory was complete: With nearly 92 percent of the precincts reporting, Sanders had won or was leading in 52 of the state’s 55 counties. Three counties, Doddridge, Grant and Mineral, had not posted any results. Overall, he won a majority of the vote.
| West Virginia Democratic Primary, 2016 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Candidate | Vote % | Votes | Delegates | |
 Bernie Sanders |
51.4% | 124,700 | 18 | |
| Hillary Clinton | 35.8% | 86,914 | 11 | |
| Paul Farrell | 8.9% | 21,694 | 0 | |
| Keith Judd | 1.8% | 4,460 | 0 | |
| Martin O'Malley | 1.6% | 3,796 | 0 | |
| Roque De La Fuente | 0.4% | 975 | 0 | |
| Totals | 242,539 | 29 | ||
| Source: The New York Times and West Virginia Secretary of State | ||||
The outcome was a sharp reversal from eight years ago, when Clinton defeated then Sen. Barack Obama in the West Virginia primary, 67-to-26 percent, while former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards won seven percent. In that race, Clinton swept all 55 of the state’s counties.
The West Virginia Democratic Primary electorate was one of the least diverse of the party’s nominating contest, typically good news for Sanders. According to the television network exit poll, a representative sampling of voters as they left their precinct polling stations, roughly nine-out-of-ten Democratic primary voters were white and Sanders won roughly half of those. In a two-person race, that would be a good night for Clinton, but it wasn’t a two-person race. Running to the right of both Sanders and Clinton was Paul Farrell Jr., a Huntington attorney who campaigned on a moderate pro-coal platform: he won more than eight percent of the total primary vote. Other minor candidates, including Keith Judd who captured a remarkable 41 percent of the state’s Democratic primary vote against Barack Obama in 2012 garnered almost another four percent. Thus, Clinton only won a little more than a third of the white vote. And with so few minority voters in the primary, she needed to get a lot more ballots from white voters to be competitive with Sanders. In 2008, she won almost seven-out-of-ten white votes.
Sanders continued to perform well among younger voters and carried about seven in ten of those 17 to 29 years old. One of Sanders’ strongest counties was Monongalia—home to West Virginia University in Morgantown—which he won with almost 58 percent of the vote. But he also roughly split seniors, those 65 years and up, with Clinton, a group that she has dominated in previous Democratic primaries.
Economic concerns appeared to be uppermost in Democratic primary voters’ minds in West Virginia. Roughly three-out-of-five voters told the exit poll that they were “very worried” about “the direction of the nation's economy in the next few years,” and Sanders won that group by around 53-to-29 percent. More than half of the Democratic primary voters said that trade “takes away U.S. jobs,” and they voted almost two-to-one for Sanders. Around a third of the primary voters said that trade “creates more U.S. jobs,” and they roughly split their ballots between Clinton and Sanders.
The Republican primary in West Virginia wasn’t a contest since all of Trump’s GOP rivals have suspended their campaigns. Trump won more than three-quarters of the primary vote. In 2012, Mitt Romney defeated former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum in the West Virginia GOP presidential primary, 70-to-12 percent. Then Texas Rep. Ron Paul won 11 percent.
| West Virginia Republican Primary, 2016 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Candidate | Vote % | Votes | Delegates | |
|
Donald Trump |
77.1% | 157,238 | 30 | |
| Ted Cruz | 9% | 18,301 | 0 | |
| John Kasich | 6.7% | 13,721 | 1 | |
| Ben Carson | 2.2% | 4,421 | 0 | |
| Marco Rubio | 1.4% | 2,908 | 0 | |
| Jeb Bush | 1.1% | 2,305 | 0 | |
| Rand Paul | 0.9% | 1,798 | 0 | |
| Mike Huckabee | 0.9% | 1,780 | 0 | |
| Chris Christie | 0.4% | 727 | 0 | |
| Carly Fiorina | 0.3% | 659 | 0 | |
| David Hall | 0.1% | 203 | 0 | |
| Totals | 204,061 | 31 | ||
| Source: The New York Times and West Virginia Secretary of State | ||||
Further evidence of the excitement around Trump’s candidacy is that Republicans set a new record for turnout, even though they didn’t have a competitive race. West Virginia Republicans beat their previous high mark of 155,692 set in 1976, when Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan were locked in a tight battle for the Republican presidential nomination. When all the votes are tallied the 2016 GOP turnout is likely to break 190,000 and could exceed 200,000. Democratic turnout in West Virginia was likely to fall more than 100,000 short of the 359,854 mark set in 2008. (The modern Democratic high mark was 372,577 set in 1976.)
Trump also handily won the Nebraska Republican presidential primary. With nearly all precincts reporting, Clinton narrowly won a so-called “beauty-contest” Democratic primary in Nebraska. Sanders handily won the Nebraska Democratic presidential caucuses back on March 5, which allocated all the state’s pledged delegates to the party’s national convention in Philadelphia.
| Nebraska Republican Primary, 2016 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Candidate | Vote % | Votes | Delegates | |
|
Donald Trump |
61.5% | 122,327 | 36 | |
| Ted Cruz | 18.4% | 36,703 | 0 | |
| John Kasich | 11.4% | 22,709 | 0 | |
| Marco Rubio | 3.6% | 7,233 | 0 | |
| Ben Carson | 5% | 10,016 | 0 | |
| Totals | 198,988 | 36 | ||
| Source: The New York Times and Nebraska Secretary of State | ||||
James A. Barnes is a senior writer for Ballotpedia and co-author of the 2016 edition of the Almanac of American Politics. He is a member of the CNN Decision Desk and will help to project the Democratic and Republican winners throughout the election cycle.
See also
- Presidential candidates, 2016
- Presidential debates (2015-2016)
- Presidential election, 2016/Polls
- 2016 presidential candidate ratings and scorecards
- Presidential election, 2016/Straw polls
