Hillary Clinton has won the Florida primary over challenger Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Clinton secured 65 percent of the vote to Sanders’s 33 percent, with 47 percent of precincts reporting. Those numbers will change as more votes are counted.
Clinton used her victory speech in West Palm Beach, Florida, to urge more people to back her, saying her campaign depended on small donations.
“If you’ve been waiting for the right moment,” she said, “now’s the time to come join us.”
The Florida victory means Clinton will take the majority of the state’s 214 Democratic delegates, which are awarded proportionally based on how much of the total vote a candidate secures.
Not including Tuesday night’s victories, Clinton has secured 768 pledged delegates and 467 superdelegates, according to the Associated Press, more than half of the 2,383 delegates needed to secure the Democratic nomination. Sanders, earned 554 pledged delegates and 26 superdelegates ahead of Tuesday’s votes.
Clinton went into Florida’s primary with a 28-point lead in the polls, according to the Real Clear Politics poll averages.
In addition to Florida, voters in Ohio, North Carolina, Missouri, and Illinois also held presidential contests on Tuesday.
Update 8:05pm CT, March 15: Added quote.
Photo via Gage Skidmore/Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0)
