Warning signs in primaries

Author: CNN

May 11, 2016 at 08:30

The voters of West Virginia are more conservative than the broader Democratic base, but Clinton will still need to run strong with moderate-to-conservative voters in Rust Belt states like Michigan and Ohio to beat Trump in November.

(CNN) Bernie Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton in West Virginia Tuesday night, keeping his long-shot bid to win the Democratic presidential nomination alive for now.

Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, captured two states -- West Virginia and Nebraska -- as voters continue to flock to the New York billionaire. Exit polls in both states painted a picture of conservative voters eager for outsiders in Washington.

Here are five takeaways f-rom Tuesday night's primaries:

West Virginia doesn't like Hillary Clinton

Clinton defeated Barack Obama here in 2008, but didn't come close to a victory on Tuesday, losing to Sanders by a wide margin.

Sanders won handily in nearly every demographic, according to exit polls. He fared strongly among the many voters concerned with the economy and won big margins in coal industry households.

Clinton has tried to clean up her comments f-rom a CNN town hall in March that she wanted to "put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business," but the damage had already set in.

The Democratic electorate in West Virginia was easily more conservative than most states thus so far, according to exit polls. But that didn't help Clinton, the more moderate of the two candidates.

Nearly 40% of Democratic voters said they want the next president to be "less liberal" than Obama. Of those voters, 62% went with Sanders -- the self-described democratic socialist.

Overall, neither candidate has much to tout here -- about one-third of Democratic primary voters said they'd support Trump in November.

Warning signs for Clinton

The always-running-late Clinton stuck to the schedule on Tuesday night, delivering a speech in Kentucky early and then making a beeline to the airport in order to not be on stage by the time West Virginia polls closed and results showing her substantial loss poured in.

Her disappointing finish hinges on more than her hit on coal -- it also shows the challenges of winning a general election while essentially running for Obama's third term.

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