Live Blog: Both Parties Hold Oregon Primaries, While Democrats Also Face Close Race in Kentucky
Oregon holds vote-by-mail elections, and has one of the highest voter turnouts in the country. (via Flickr)
12:36 p.m.: It’s primary day again! This Tuesday, all candidates are waiting for results in Oregon and the Democratic candidates are also battling it out in Kentucky. Polls close in Oregon at 7 p.m. PST, and in Kentucky at 3 p.m. PST – meaning there’s only a few hours left until the first results roll in. Here’s what you need to know:
Oregon votes by mail, and hold closed primaries for both parties. Around 30% of Oregon voters are registered as nonaffiliated; however, Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders is still expected to win the state. Additionally, Oregon recently implemented a new automatic voter registration system. The Nation reports, “The 51,558 voters signed up through automatic registration is an average of 12,889 new voters per month, three times higher than the average of 4,163 monthly registrants in 2012.”
Both Democratic candidates have been campaigning hard in Kentucky – Hillary Clinton had a packed Monday campaigning in the southern state. Although she is “all but certain to claim her party’s nomination,” writes the New York Times, “she would prefer to stop losing primaries.”
Donald Trump, meanwhile, as the presumptive GOP nominee, has spent less time campaigning and focused his attention on meeting with Republican leaders. The LA Times explains his unpopularity amongst his party:
Trump, lacking the long-term relationships and campaign infrastructure of previous GOP nominees, must rely on state parties, their voter contacts and the phone-bank and door-knocking support they muster to bolster what has largely been a Twitter- and national-media-driven campaign….
Backers of Trump, and sometimes the candidate himself, openly feuded with GOP leaders in a number of states, including several — Colorado, New Hampshire, Ohio, Virginia — that will probably be strongly contested this fall.
Though those party chiefs now profess their support for the presumptive Republican nominee, the depth of their commitment remains to be seen, as well as how readily they can marshal the donors, volunteers and other activists Trump will need to boost his chances in November.
Finally, although both Clinton and Trump seem to be focusing their campaign attacks on each other in advance of a likely general election match-up, recent polls show that Sanders would have a better chance of beating Trump in a general election.
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Source: http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/live_blog_both_parties_hold_oregon_primaries_while_democrats_20160517/
