WASHINGTON • Hillary Clinton continued her relentless march toward the Democratic nomination Tuesday, piling up decisive Ides of March victories over Bernie Sanders that showcased Clinton’s strength in swing states crucial to the election of the next president.
Clinton held a slim lead in Missouri over Sanders in unofficial results reported early Wednesday by the secretary of state. She narrowly pulled out a win in her home state of Illinois, and won more decisively in three other contests.
Those victories added to her momentum and delegate lead, making Sanders’ case for the nomination more difficult without some intervening event before the end of the primaries in early June.
Unlike the Republicans, Democrats don’t have the winner-take-all possibilities in states still to come on the election calendar. Clinton can maintain her decisive advantage by continuing to pile up delegates proportionately.
The former secretary of state easily bested Sanders in Florida, piling up a roughly 2-1 advantage in a state that has been crucial in every general presidential election this century. She carried North Carolina, a recently emerged swing state, by a smaller but still decisive margin. This was the final cinch in a Clinton sweep of the 11 Southern-state primaries that have been held so far.
Clinton also beat Sanders convincingly in Ohio, another perennially important November swing state. In winning there, Clinton answered critics who said her loss to Sanders last week in Michigan exposed weaknesses on Clinton’s positions on trade and her appeal to blue-collar voters.
“We are moving closer to securing the Democratic Party nomination and winning this election in November,” a raspy-voiced Clinton said in a victory speech in Florida.
But some weaknesses for Clinton persisted. CNN exit polls showed her winning decisively among Democrats in Illinois and Missouri, but losing to Sanders by almost 3-1 among self-described independents in Illinois, and 2-1 in Missouri. Independents will be a decisive voting bloc for the Democratic and Republican nominees in November.
Sanders, speaking to an enthusiastic crowd in Phoenix, did not sound like a candidate willing to concede anything.
Reiterating his campaign themes of income inequality and big money’s influence on politics, he said: “Are you tired of a few billionaires running our economy? Well, if you are, you have come to the right place.”
In celebrating her victories, Clinton referenced Republican front-runner Donald Trump as much as Sanders, saying that Trump’s tough stance on illegal immigration, torture and other issues “doesn’t make him strong, it makes him wrong.” She appealed to Sanders’ youthful base, highlighting issues such as college affordability.
Both rhetorical gestures illustrated how Clinton has turned her primary focus toward the general election.
Unlike the Republican free-for-all, where stop-Trump movements have spiked and waned, the Democrats have progressed through a methodical, two-person contest. Clinton has ground out proportional wins and has piled up the vast majority of party “superdelegates” — elected officials and luminaries not bound to voter verdicts — to relentlessly build toward an insurmountable lead over Sanders. She said that at the end of the night she expected to lead by at least 300 delegates among those chosen in primaries and caucuses so far.
The final division of Missouri’s 71 Democratic delegates at stake Tuesday night (of a total of 84) was not immediately clear, but they are likely to be relatively evenly divided. Democrats have a more complicated delegate-apportioning process than Republicans, awarding them through a formula based on minimum-vote thresholds and returns on the congressional district and statewide level.
Clinton entered the day with a more than 2-1 delegate lead, controlling 1,235 delegates, more than half the 2,382 required to win the nomination.
Final vote totals for Kansas City and Jackson County, Mo., could not be confirmed by their local election boards.
Some voters made late switches. In Columbia, Ill., retired teacher Patricia Weber, 83, said she switched to Sanders from Clinton because she thought he would take a firm stand against corruption and fight the loss of jobs to foreign countries. She said she changed her mind after hearing Sanders on television Monday night.
“I’d always been for Hillary up to that point,” Weber said, standing outside her polling place at the American Legion. “But Hillary’s background would lead her to work for the establishment.”
Weber’s husband, George, said he had voted for Clinton because of her experience.
Louis Sanker, 43, also of Columbia, said he had voted for Sanders. “I’d like a change in management,” he said.
In Missouri, the Rev. Brian Jackson, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Elmwood Park and president of the Beverly Hills Board of Aldermen, said he had voted for Clinton because he thought Congress would not work with Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist.
“You’re talking about free college and health care as a right,” Jackson said, describing Sanders’ campaign promises. “Any red-state Democrat who supported that might as well walk out of office. You know those people (in Congress) are not going to vote for that.”
Clinton corralled most of the Democratic establishment in Missouri, including Gov. Jay Nixon and Sen. Claire McCaskill.
The Democratic primary calendar now enters a relatively quiet period, with 435 delegates to be awarded over the next five weeks, before an April 19 showdown in New York, which has 291 delegates. A week later, Connecticut and Pennsylvania will anchor a five-state primary in which an additional 462 delegates will be apportioned.
Sanders has vowed to stay until the end, through the climactic June 7 six-state day that includes California and New Jersey, and in which 806 delegates will be at stake.
Jeremy Kohler and Kim Bell of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report from St. Louis.
Chuck Raasch • 202-298-6880
@craasch on Twitter
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