The 2016 Alaska Democratic presidential caucuses were held on March 26 in the U.S. state of Alaska as one of the

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's primaries ahead of the

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. On the same day, Democratic caucuses were held in Hawaii and in the state of Washington. The

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did not hold any primaries that day; their own Alaska caucuses took place on March 1, 2016.

Opinion polling

Results

Analysis

Alaska gave Sanders his largest win outside of his home state of Vermont. He won 80% of the vote and 82% of the state convention delegates, and carried every borough and census area in the state by landslide margins. He swept Democratic strongholds - including sparsely populated areas in the

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- as well as GOP strongholds such as

Fairbanks Fairbanks is a home rule city and the borough seat of the Fairbanks North Star Borough in the U.S. state of Alaska. Fairbanks is the largest city in the Interior region of Alaska and the second largest in the state. The 2020 Census put the po ...

and surrounding Interior Alaska,

Anchorage Anchorage () is the largest city in the U.S. state of Alaska by population. With a population of 291,247 in 2020, it contains nearly 40% of the state's population. The Anchorage metropolitan area, which includes Anchorage and the neighboring Ma ...

on the Kenai Peninsula, and

Juneau The City and Borough of Juneau, more commonly known simply as Juneau ( ; tli, Dzánti K'ihéeni ), is the capital city of the state of Alaska. Located in the Gastineau Channel and the Alaskan panhandle, it is a unified municipality and the se ...

in the Southeast. A Sanders win in Alaska was expected, since he generally performed well in

caucus A caucus is a meeting of supporters or members of a specific political party or movement. The exact definition varies between different countries and political cultures. The term originated in the United States, where it can refer to a meeting ...

states, in majority white electorates, and in the Pacific Northwest. Also, Clinton had lost the state eight years before to Barack Obama, and she did not campaign personally in the state (Sanders did not either, but he sent his wife

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to campaign for him in

). At a rally in Wisconsin on March 26, Sanders told supporters “We knew from day one that politically we were going to have a hard time in the Deep South, but we knew things were going to improve when we headed west.”

References

2016 File:2016 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Bombed-out buildings in Ankara following the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt; the impeachment trial of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff; Damaged houses during the 2016 Nagorno-Karabakh ...

Democratic primary Alaska March 2016 events in the United States {{Alaska-election-stub