FAST Facts about the Washington State Presidential Primary
We congratulate both Vice President Biden and Senator Sanders on receiving pledged delegates from Washington’s first Democratic presidential primary! Nearly 1.6 million Democratic voters cast a ballot, resulting in 591,403 votes for Vice President Biden and 570,039 votes for Senator Sanders.
Those vote totals translate into 46 pledged delegates for Vice President Biden and 43 pledged delegates for Senator Sanders to the Democratic National Convention in July. As a reminder, Washington Democrats have shifted to an all-digital delegate selection process, but as has been true from the beginning of our primary, both presidential campaigns who received pledged delegates will retain the right of refusal over who is selected to fill each of their pledged delegate positions.
How are the delegates to the Democratic National Convention chosen?
The Legislative District Caucuses used to select delegates to the state convention are now shifting to an entirely digital voting process that we will be working with our local party organizations to put in place. This process will be modeled after the procedure used to fill state legislative vacancies and will include all Precinct Committee Officers in each legislative district.
The Congressional District Caucuses will also be shifted to a similar remote voting process. We are still developing a digital process for the election of delegates to the national convention, and are working closely with both the Biden and Sanders campaigns on this. As has always been the case, each presidential campaign retains the right of refusal over any person elected to serve as a delegate pledged to their campaign.
You can find the breakdown of delegates by presidential candidate for each Legislative District here.
You can find the breakdown of delegates by presidential candidate for each Congressional District here.
You can register to run for delegate through our entirely digital process and find more information at www.waelectioncenter.com.
More information about convention
We are your one stop shop for all things relating to your legislative district caucus, the delegate selection process, or your local Democratic party organization. If you have any questions about the delegate selection process head to www.waelectioncenter.com or contact delegatehelp2020@wa-democrats.org.
For reference, here’s some background about how to read these results:
How to Read WA's Democratic Primary Results
For the first time in over 75 years, Washington State Democratic voters participated in a state-run Presidential Primary to allocate National Convention delegates to Presidential candidates. Both major political parties are allocating their delegates this way, and voters have a new and exciting opportunity to have a say in who should be our next President!
When was the Presidential Primary?
The Washington Presidential Primary was March 10, 2020. Washington is a Vote-by-Mail state, so registered
voters received ballots in the mail about 18 days before Primary Day.
