2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries
State/territory Clinton Sanders
New York 58.0% 42.0%
Connecticut 51.7% 46.5%
Delaware 59.8% 39.2%
Maryland 63.0% 33.3%
Pennsylvania 55.6% 43.6%
Rhode Island 43.3% 55.0%
Indiana 47.5% 52.5%
Guam 59.5% 40.5%
West Virginia 35.8% 51.4%
Kentucky 46.8% 46.3%
Oregon 42.5% 55.9%
Timeline -- Late April and May
The 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries and caucuses were a series of electoral contests organized by the Democratic Party to select the 4,051 delegates to the 2016 Democratic National Convention held July 25-28 and determine the nominee for President of the United States in the 58th U.S. presidential election. The elections took place within all fifty U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and five U.S. territories and occurred between February 1 and June 14, 2016. A total of six major candidates entered the race starting April 12, 2015, when former Secretary of State and New York Senator Hillary Clinton formally announced her second bid for the presidency. She was followed by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, former Governor of Maryland Martin O'Malley, former Governor of Rhode Island Lincoln Chafee, former Virginia Senator Jim Webb and Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig. A draft movement was started to encourage Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren to seek the presidency, but Warren declined to run, as did incumbent Vice President Joe Biden. Webb, Chafee, and Lessig withdrew prior to the February 1, 2016, Iowa caucuses. Clinton won Iowa by the closest margin in the history of the state's Democratic caucus. O'Malley suspended his campaign after a distant third-place finish, leaving Clinton and Sanders the only two candidates. The race turned out to be more competitive than expected, with Sanders decisively winning New Hampshire, while Clinton subsequently won Nevada and won a landslide victory in South Carolina. Clinton then secured numerous important wins in each of the nine most populous states including California, New York, Florida, and Texas, while Sanders scored various victories in between. He then laid off a majority of staff after the New York primary and Clinton's multi-state sweep on April 26. On June 6, the Associated Press and NBC News stated that Clinton had become the presumptive nominee after reaching the required number of delegates, including both pledged and unpledged delegates (superdelegates), to secure the nomination.