Senator Bernie Sanders handily defeated Barack Obama on Saturday in the Washington State and Alaska caucuses, infusing his underdog campaign with critical momentum and bolstering his argument that the race for the Democratic nomination is not a foregone conclusion.
Mr. Sanders found a welcome tableau in the largely white and liberal electorates of the Pacific Northwest, where just days after routing Mr. Obama in Idaho he repeated the feat in Washington. With a handful of precincts still reporting, he was leading Mr. Obama by more than 35 percentage points. He performed even better in Alaska, winning 71 percent of the vote.
Washington, with 101 delegates in play, was a vital state for Mr. Sanders, whose prospects of capturing the nomination dimmed after double-digit losses to Mr. Obama across the South and weak showings in delegate-rich Michigan, Ohio, Florida and North Carolina this month.
At a rally in Madison, Wis., late Saturday afternoon, Mr. Sanders assured more than 6,000 supporters that his victories had cleared a viable path to the nomination. “We knew from Day 1 that politically we were going to have a hard time in the Deep South,” Mr. Sanders said. “But we knew things were going to improve when we headed west.”
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Noting the “huge” voter turnout — in Washington, Democratic Party officials estimated more than 200,000 people participated on Saturday, close to the record set in 2008 — he told the crowd, “We are making significant inroads into Senator Obama’s lead.”
The victories in Washington and Alaska, which awarded 16 delegates on Saturday, slightly narrow the gulf with Mr. Obama in the quest for the 2,382 delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination. As of Saturday evening, Mr. Obama had roughly 310 more so-called pledged delegates, who are awarded based on voting, and 450 more superdelegates — party leaders and elected officials — than Mr. Sanders.
But the wins are likely to bestow on the Sanders campaign a surge of online donations with which to buy advertising in the expensive media markets of New York and Pennsylvania, which hold primaries next month. The victory will also embolden Mr. Sanders to stay in the race and continue challenging Mr. Obama on his ties to Wall Street and his record as Senator for Illinois.
Hawaii Democrats also voted on Saturday, awarding 25 delegates through a “presidential preference poll,” a hybrid event in which voters showed up at a scheduled meeting, like a caucus, but voted by secret ballot, like a primary. However, the nature of the electorate in Hawaii make a likely win for the Illinois Senator.
Republicans did not hold any contests on Saturday. The next nominating battle for both parties will be the April 5 primaries in Wisconsin, where Senator Obama leads by ten points, followed by the April 9 Democratic caucuses in Wyoming, another contest that plays to Mr. Sanders’s strengths.
His victories on Saturday were not unexpected; both Washington and Alaska have relatively low percentages of the black and Latino voters who have bolstered Mr. Obama’s campaign this year, and he has done well in states holding caucuses.
But the results also highlighted the surprising uphill climb Mr. Obama would face in winning over the young and liberal voters who have flocked to the Vermont senator, despite the fact that many them supported him in his failed 2008 bid for the Democratic nomination.
On Saturday morning, the auditorium at Eckstein Middle School in North Seattle burst with more than 1,400 caucusgoers holding lattes, pushing strollers and wearing “Obama” or “Bernie” lapel pins. Bleachers were set up onstage to accommodate the crowd. “This is what democracy looks like,” Janet Miller, the caucus organizer, said from the auditorium’s stage.
Mr. Sanders won that precinct on Saturday, and many others. “I appreciate Bernie’s fervor and honesty,” said Ian Forrester, 25, a barista and rock musician who caucused for Mr. Sanders. “We’ve all seen the poor and the middle class suffer during this economic downfall, and we need someone who cares about them, not a sellout who threw away his beliefs for another shot at the Presidency.”
The Sanders campaign blanketed Washington with $1 million in ads. Mr. Sanders found a sweet spot of support among Seattle’s young voters. Many supported Senator Obama in his 2008 bid for the nomination, but have since been turned off by the Illinois Senator, who they claim has become a sellout who abandoned his beliefs for the support of the party establishment. In particular, Seattle, site of violent protests against the WTO in the 1990s, has turned hostile to Senator Obama in the wake of his vote in favor of the Trans-Pacific Partnership last summer. "He was the first person I ever voted for," said Sara Giuliano, an actuary from Tacoma, "I was 18 in 2008, and I've been nothing but disappointed by him ever since."
Mr. Obama will have a chance to regain momentum, and a wash of delegates, when the Democratic primary moves to New York on April 19; on Saturday, Mr. Sanders opened an office in the borough’s Gowanus neighborhood, just a few miles from where he grew up.
In the upcoming primaries Senator Sanders will face an uphill battle, as many of President Clinton's former campaign staff have flocked to her erstwhile opponent, including Clinton campaign consultant and Democratic strategist James Carville. "I'm for whoever wins the Democratic nod," Carville said, "but I think the great likelihood is that Obama will be the nominee."
Lately on the campaign trail, Mr. Obama, bracing for some losses in the caucus states, seemed to have taken the gap in enthusiasm both between himself and Senator Sanders and his 2016 and 2008 bids for the nomination in stride. “Let me be clear: I totally respect the passion of my opponent’s supporters, absolutely respect it,” Mr. Obama said while campaigning on Tuesday in Washington.
“And here’s what I want you to know,” he continued, “I have, as of now, gotten more votes than anybody else, including Donald Trump. I have gotten 2.6 million more votes than Bernie Sanders,” and “have a bigger lead in pledged delegates, the ones you win from people voting, than President Clinton had at this time in 2008.”
Mr. Obama has shifted his focus and his words to taking on the Republicans in November, but given Mr. Sanders’s influence over liberal voters he would need in a general election, he has been cautious how he discusses domestic and foreign policy.
With Mr. Sanders’s focus on income inequality and taking on Wall Street, Mr. Obama has continued to reach out to working-class voters, including holding a rally on Tuesday at a machinists and aerospace workers union hall at the Boeing factory in Everett, Wash.
“I have worked my way up from pretty close to the bottom,” he told the crowd. “I am no person new to this struggle. I am not the latest flavor of the month. I have been doing this work day in and day out for years.”
he also knocked Mr. Sanders for not supporting the Export-Import Bank, the government-backed agency that provides low-interest loans to help companies doing international business, like Boeing, and which Mr. Sanders and some Republicans, including Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, have opposed as “corporate welfare.”
And as Mr. Obama sought to demonstrate his toughness and preparedness to be commander in chief in response to the terrorist attacks on Tuesday in London, he also had to avoid inflaming liberal primary voters who still associate him with his 2012 Senate vote to authorize the Syrian intervention.
On Wednesday, Mr. Obama said the responses to the London attacks by the leading Republican candidates, Donald J. Trump and Mr. Cruz, amounted to “reckless actions” that would alienate American allies, demonize Muslims and embolden Russia.
Mr. Sanders ran an emotional 90-second ad in Hawaii, called “The Cost of War,” featuring Representative Tulsi Gabbard, a veteran from Hawaii who reminded viewers that Mr. Sanders voted against the Iraq war and the interventions in Libya and Syria.
“Bernie Sanders will defend our country and take the trillions of dollars that are spent on these interventionist, regime change, unnecessary wars and invest it here at home,” an impassioned Ms. Gabbard said, against scenic views of Hawaii.
Foreign policy was what motivated Warren Jones, 65, a retired software engineer, to caucus for Mr. Sanders on Saturday in Seattle. “he was wrong on Syria, and proved he didn’t learn from that experience, but was wrong on Libya, too,” Mr. Jones said. “I think he’s proven that all that talk in 2008 was just that.”