Sanders wins Oregon while Clinton claims Kentucky

US Senator Bernie Sanders scored a decisive victory Tuesday against Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary in Oregon, boosting his argument for keeping his underdog campaign alive through the conclusion of the primary process.

Several US networks called the Pacific northwest state for the liberal Sanders, who was leading the former secretary of state 53 percent to 47%.

“We just won Oregon, and we’re going to win California,” Sanders told thousands of supporters in Carson, California as he predicted victory in the nation’s largest state, which votes on June 7.

Earlier in the night, Clinton claimed victory in an extraordinarily tight race in the state of Kentucky.

Sanders, a self-declared democratic socialist, declared he would not be forced out of the race by narrow Clinton wins.

“It appears tonight that we’re going to end up with about half the delegates” in Kentucky, Sanders told the raucous rally.

“Let me be as clear as I can be… We are in ’til the last ballot is cast,” he said to a huge roar.

Clinton has a commanding lead in the all-important national delegate count and is marching toward vying for the presidency in the November 8 general election despite her string of recent primary losses.

Victories in Kentucky and Oregon would have definitively halted her slide and helped reverse the narrative that her campaign is showing significant weakness ahead of an almost certain showdown with Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee.

Trump — the last man standing in the GOP race — won the only Republican contest in Oregon. The billionaire businessman picked up nine delegates earlier Tuesday in Guam, which held its territorial convention in March, and had 1,143 delegates heading into the Oregon contest — fewer than 100 delegates short of the 1,237 he needs to clinch the nomination.

Sanders had counted on a Kentucky victory to build on his win last week in neighboring West Virginia as he battles to keep his long-shot nomination bid alive.

West Virginia and Kentucky are linked to coal, as is much of Appalachia — the largely white, long-struggling eastern US region where many feel they have been left behind in the lukewarm recovery from the 2007-2008 financial crisis.

Clinton saw Kentucky as an opportunity to appeal to working-class white men — a demographic where the former secretary of state has lagged behind both the celebrity billionaire Trump and Sanders.

Tuesday’s Democratic elections took place amid new questions about party unity following a divisive weekend state party convention in Nevada. Supporters of Sanders tossed chairs and made death threats against the Nevada party chairwoman at the event in Las Vegas, arguing the party leadership rigged the results of the convention in favor of Clinton.

In a sign of the tensions between the two sides, Sanders issued a defiant statement Tuesday dismissing complaints from Nevada Democrats as “nonsense” and said his supporters were not being treated with “fairness and respect.”

In California, Sanders urged the party to be welcoming to voters who are “prepared to fight for real economic and social change.” Addressing the party’s leadership, Sanders declared, “Open the doors, let the people in.”

Nearing the end of a long primary slog, the two Democratic candidates are preparing for June 7 primaries in California, New Jersey and four other states and then the District of Columbia primary on June 14. When pledged delegates and superdelegates are combined, Clinton is now about 96 percent of the way toward securing the Democratic nomination.