With 33.6% of the vote, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has won the Democratic presidential primaries in California. The Republican presidential primaries have come in with Donald Trump winning at 92.6% as of press time.
Trump, who is the current presidential incumbent, has enacted many policies over the last four years. When he was first elected, days of protest against him overtook the Berkeley streets, and Trump’s presidency has been a contentious topic on campus ever since.
The next Republican candidates with the highest percentage of votes are Joe Walsh and Bill Weld, both coming in with 2.5% each. Walsh dropped out in early February, leaving Weld in the race against Trump.
Most of Trump’s re-election platforms are around immigration and foreign policy, highlighting his renegotiation for the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, and his work on building a border wall.
His actions to repeal the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program led to many protests on the UC Berkeley campus and to the UC Office of the President filing a lawsuit against the federal government to keep the program instated.
The Democratic presidential primaries, which was a tighter race, saw former vice president Joe Biden following Sanders with 24.9% of the votes. After him is billionaire and former mayor of New York City Mike Bloomberg with 14.3%.
Sanders’ campaign has focused on a number of platforms, but some notable ones are his focus on the Green New Deal, Medicare for All and college for all. He has represented Vermont at the federal level since his election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1990.
He has a long history of supporting activist movements, including being arrested while protesting segregation in Chicago during his time as a college student in 1963.
Along with that, Sanders was recently endorsed by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299. Various members of the Berkeley City Council have also split between endorsing Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., with three endorsing Sanders and two endorsing Warren.
Warren was in fourth, with 12.0% as of press time.
Sanders will be second to Biden by an estimated 70 delegates. Biden, who has been deemed the “most electable” by many watching the national race, was vice president for both of former president Barack Obama’s terms.
His platforms revolve around bringing federal focus back to the middle class, and he has plans to increase funding for housing, to support immigrants and to strengthen worker organizing, among other plans.