News / Politics

Clinton caps historic night with big win in California

Wednesday, 08 June 2016 3:28 PM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 08 June 2016 6:46 PM ]

US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton celebrates on stage during her primary night event at the Duggal Greenhouse, Brooklyn Navy Yard, June 7, 2016 in New York. (AFP photo)

US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has won the California primary, becoming the party’s presumptive presidential nominee.

Clinton defeated rival Bernie Sanders by a margin of 56 to 43 percent on Tuesday night, with 94 percent reporting, according to the Associated Press.

Early on Wednesday morning, the Associated Press and CBS News both declared Clinton the winner.

The former secretary of state will take a majority of the state's 475 pledged delegates.

Clinton also beat Sanders in New Jersey and South Dakota. In addition, she defeated the Vermont senator in New Mexico.

Meanwhile, Sanders clinched victories in North Dakota and Montana.

Clinton praised Sanders for running an “extraordinary” campaign that has “excited millions of people, especially young people.”

She appealed to supporters of Sanders to unite with her against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.

Clinton described herself as the first woman to be nominated by a major party for US presidency.

“Thanks to you, we've reached a milestone. It's the first time in our nation's history that a woman will be a major party's nominee,” Clinton told her supporters in Brooklyn, New York.

With the wins on Tuesday night, Clinton surpassed the 2,383 delegates needed to clinch the nomination.

“Tonight's victory is not about one person. It belongs to generations of women and men who struggled and sacrificed and made this moment possible,” she stated.

Clinton also intensified her attacks on Trump, suggesting that his values and rhetoric are incompatible with American principles.

“Donald Trump is temperamentally unfit to be president and commander-in-chief,” she said.

“We believe that we should lift each other up, not tear each other down,” she said in a veiled reference to Trump’s divisive rhetoric on the campaign trail.

Republicans also voted in several states on Tuesday, although Trump became the party’s presumptive nominee in early May, when his two remaining rivals dropped out of the race.

Trump's campaign has been marked by controversial statements, including disparaging remarks about women, Mexican immigrants and Muslims.

The billionaire has also said he would deport 11 million undocumented workers from the United States and would establish a “deportation force” for this purpose, and would construct a wall on the US-Mexican border to prevent Mexicans from entering America.

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