Hillary Clinton won big in New Jersey Tuesday night, putting her well over the combined number of pledged Democratic delegates and superdelegates needed to secure her party’s presidential nomination.
The former secretary of state was named the presumptive Democratic nominee late Monday night by the Associated Press, following her weekend victories in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico and last-minute commitments from a handful of superdelegates to support her.
Without the 142 delegates New Jersey plans to send to the upcoming convention in July, the AP still shows Clinton as having secured 1,812 pledged delegates and 571 superdelegates.
Meanwhile, Clinton’s opponent Bernie Sanders trails her by nearly 300 pledged delegates and more than 3 million votes.
Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, have spent the last two weeks barnstorming California – the state with the largest delegate prize – but the former first lady took time last week to campaign alongside Democratic Sen. Cory Booker during a 24-hour visit to the Garden State. Her daughter, Chelsea, also spent time speaking to voters in the state.
A Monmouth University poll released Monday showed Booker, who has repeatedly been floated as a potential running mate for Clinton, with a net-positive favorability rating of 53 percent among voters in his home state.
“Folks need to understand that this is a really important primary — not just in terms of the contest on the Democratic side, but to send Hillary into the convention with a lot of momentum behind her as we prepare to face Donald Trump,” Booker told Roll Call the day before New Jersey voters cast their ballots.
With the primaries coming to an end on Tuesday, Clinton now heads into the general election against presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump with a new wave of momentum.
RealClearPolitics found the former first lady leading Trump by 2 percentage points in an average of general election matchup polls.
