Trump and Biden win Washington's presidential primaries
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President Biden and former President Donald Trump are the winners of Washington's presidential primaries, the Associated Press projected Tuesday.
Why it matters: The results in Washington state provided Trump with the final delegates he needed to become the presumptive Republican nominee for president, per the AP.
Catch up quick: While a Biden-Trump rematch had been looking increasingly inevitable, both candidates headed into Tuesday's primaries still needing to win more delegates to clinch their party's nominations.
- The AP named Biden as the presumptive Democratic nominee soon after polls closed in Georgia on Tuesday, before the first results from Washington were posted.
By the numbers: In the first batch of results from Washington's vote-by-mail election, Trump was winning about 74% of votes among Republicans.
- Biden was capturing nearly 87% of the vote in the state's Democratic primary as of Tuesday night.
State of play: Many votes remain uncounted, so the results are likely to shift slightly in the coming days.
- The primary results decide how many delegates from Washington each candidate gets for the Democratic and Republican national conventions, when the parties will formally choose their nominees.
- The Evergreen State has 92 delegates to allocate to Democratic candidates and 43 delegates for Republican candidates based on the primary results.
The intrigue: About 26% of Washington's Republican primary voters were choosing GOP candidates other than Trump in the first batch of primary returns.
- That's despite all other Republican candidates having dropped out of the race before the March 12 election.
- As of Tuesday night, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley was capturing about 22% of the GOP vote in Washington, while Ron DeSantis had 2.2% and Chris Christie had 1.1%.
Reality check: Under Republican Party rules, whichever candidate captures a majority of a state's primary vote wins all the state's GOP delegates.
What we're watching: Some Washington Democrats had sought to protest the Biden administration's handling of the Israel-Hamas war by choosing the "uncommitted delegates" option.
- As of Tuesday, about 7.5% of votes in Washington's Democratic primary were for "uncommitted delegates."
- For Washington to send a pool of uncommitted delegates to the Democratic National Convention, the uncommitted vote must reach at least 15% — either statewide or in one or more of Washington's 10 congressional districts.