Sanders wins Wyoming, but delegates split

Caucus becomes latest victory for senator

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Wyoming Democrats handed presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders another victory Saturday over front-runner Hillary Clinton, but the small delegate prize was split evenly between them.

Officials say the caucuses in 23 counties resulted in seven delegates each after Sanders won 56 percent of the votes cast and Clinton collected 44 percent.

The win prolonged the momentum of Sanders, who has won seven of the past eight caucuses and primaries but still trails Clinton in the overall delegate count.

The contest in Wyoming is the final Democratic vote ahead of New York’s April 19 primary, where the candidates will be vying for 247 delegates.

An average of several polls in New York shows Clinton with a double-digit lead.

Speaking to supporters in the Bronx on Saturday, Sanders seemed undeterred.

“We are within striking distance,” he said.

The roughly 7,000 Democrats who attended the Wyoming caucuses showed plenty of enthusiasm and spirit.

At a noisy high school gymnasium in Cheyenne, Van Snow and girlfriend Sara Rhodes parked themselves in different stands marked off for each candidate.

“I don’t dislike Bernie,” Snow, a 27-year-old attorney, said as he sat on the Clinton side. “He clearly has a lot of passion. … But I have some real concerns about his electability to win the general, and I also have concerns about his ability to implement policies.”

Rhodes, a 25-year-old graduate student seeking a social work degree, sat on the Sanders side, which appeared to have a few more people than the Clinton section.

“I feel like he stands for a lot of things that I believe in,” Rhodes said. “I think he’s one of the better candidates for women and people of color and the LGBT community. … I just don’t get a good vibe from Hillary, I guess.”

Steeped in conservative cowboy culture and proud of being the first state to grant women the right to vote, Wyoming is a heavily Republican state where more than 140,000 residents are registered with the GOP, compared with about 41,000 registered Democrats.

Sanders made a campaign stop in Wyoming on Tuesday, attracting about 2,000 people at a rally in Laramie. His wife, Jane, held two town hall meetings in Wyoming leading to the caucus.

Clinton bypassed the state in favor of campaigning elsewhere.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., touches the Tree of Hope as he arrives for a campaign event Saturday at the Apollo Theatre in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan.