The Remaining Delegates Are Crucial

Now that Washington's GOP primary is behind us, there are just five remaining contests for Republicans, even though just one candidate stands. On June 7, the final batch of states will vote for the Republican candidate of their choice, and those states are California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota. With the primaries gone so quickly, how many delegates are left after Washington? There are only a few opportunities left for candidates to rack up the numbers, so the remaining delegates are crucial to the race for the White House.

On the GOP side, there are 303 delegates left to win after Washington, and California holds a large number of them with 172 delegates. With the large pool of delegates left for Republicans to win, we are almost certainly about to see a Donald Trump nomination. After Trump won at least 27 Washington delegates on Tuesday night, the GOP frontrunner currently holds 1,196 delegates, which means he only needs 41 more to secure his spot to represent his party for the White House bid.

With the high number of remaining delegates after Washington state's primary, Trump is basically a shoe-in as the GOP nominee. So we might as well drop the "presumptive" — because, let's be honest, he definitely did what he came to do.

For the Democrats, the race won't end quite as easily. There are still seven contests left in the Democratic primaries for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders to pave their way to a nomination, and together these states pool a combined 781 pledged delegates. The remaining states include North Dakota, California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota on June 7, and Washington, D.C. on June 14.

California alone holds a large number of these delegates, with 475 total, and the most recent polls put Clinton in the lead in the state. In fact, according to an KABC Los Angeles poll from May 22, Clinton's California lead over Sanders is 57 percent to Sanders' 39 percent, so definitely not a small margin.

However, FiveThirtyEight has projected that Clinton won't likely take the nomination until New Jersey's votes are in. New Jersey holds 126 of the remaining 781 Democratic delegates, and that combined with California is a huge portion of the final delegates up for grabs to these candidates. Clinton is (and has been) in the lead over the entire course of her campaign and holds 1,750 of the 2,383 pledged delegates she needs to be nominated.

Sanders follows with a delegate count of 1,448. While this still gives him a slight chance at the nomination, we won't know how things turn out until June 7, and it's looking like the Bern might be cooling.