CHEYENNE — Wyoming Democrats handed Bernie Sanders another victory Saturday over front-runner Hillary Clinton.
His Wyoming caucus win maintains the momentum that Sanders is eager to exploit as the campaign moves to much bigger states, including New York, with more delegates at stake.
Sanders won the Wisconsin primary earlier in the week. He now has won seven of the last eight caucuses and primaries, although he still trails Clinton in the overall delegate count.
Wyoming had only 14 delegates at stake Saturday, and they will be split between Sanders and Clinton depending on the final results.
At stake in Wyoming’s 23 county caucuses on Saturday were 14 of the state’s 18 delegates to the Democratic National Convention.
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, sending her husband and former President Bill Clinton to Wyoming to campaign on her behalf.
Steeped in conservative cowboy culture but 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.
However, the Wyoming Democratic Party has boosted its registration by about 5,000 new members this election year, state party executive director Aimee Van Cleave said.
Van Cleave was encouraged by the turnout, saying it wasn’t as big as the record 8,600 who caucused statewide in 2008 but should be among the highest turnouts ever among Democrats in the state.
Wyoming has a total of 18 delegates who will cast votes for presidential candidates at the Democratic National Convention in July. Two are party leaders and two are national committee members who are allowed to vote independently for the candidate for their choice.
Van Cleave said Wyoming will have the fewest delegates among the states at the Democratic convention. Wyoming sends 29 delegates to the Republican National Convention.
