Feb. 5 Western Voters: Different States of Mind

CQ Politics’ series talking with political observers about what’s on voters’ minds in the Super Tuesday states wraps up with a look at the West.

Western states will have quite an impact on the crucial delegate count Tuesday night — especially since one of the states is California, by far the nation’s most populous state and the mother lode of delegates for both parties’ national conventions.

A total of 687 delegates are allocated the seven Western states holding Democratic events on Tuesday or a third of the party’s total of 2,062 across the country that day; 441 of those, or 22 percent of the national total, are in California alone. On the Republican side, 362 delegates, slightly more than a third of the national total of 1,048 in all of the GOP’s Super Tuesday states, are in the six Western states holding Super Tuesday contests, with 173 (or 16.5 percent) in California alone.

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