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How Berkeley Voted:
March 2020 Primary
Sanders won 41% Plurality

Rob Wrenn
Friday March 27, 2020 - 03:36:00 PM

Bernie Sanders won the largest share of votes cast in Berkeley in this year’s Democratic presidential primary. He garnered 20,131 votes, amounting to 40.5% of votes cast for Democratic presidential candidates. 

Elizabeth Warren finished second with 14,907 votes or 30% of the total. Biden received 18.7% and Bloomberg received 6%. 

Peter Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, who dropped out of the race for president right before the primary received 2.1% and 1.6% respectively. Some vote by mail ballots had already been cast for them before they dropped out. 14 other candidates split the remaining 1.1% of Democratic votes cast. 

 

California Democratic Presidential Primary March 3, 2020 

 

Number of and percent of votes 

 

 

 

 

Sanders 

Warren 

Biden 

Bloomberg 

Berkeley 

20,131 40.5% 

14,907 30.0% 

9,277 18.7% 

2,967 6.0% 

District 1 (NW Berk) 

2,903 39.7% 

2,468 33.8% 

1,253 17.1% 

344 4.7% 

District 2 (SW Berk) 

2,802 45.1% 

1,876 30.2% 

1,029 16.6% 

272 4.4% 

District 3 (South Berk) 

3,148 48.7% 

1,930 29.9% 

927 14.4% 

230 3.6% 

District 4 (Central Berk) 

2,431 48.3% 

1,468 29.2% 

736 14.6% 

209 4.2% 

District 5 (North Berk) 

2,488 28.7% 

2,845 32.8% 

1,997 23.0% 

785 9.0% 

District 6 (NE Berk) 

2,011 30.3% 

1,950 29.4% 

1,626 24.5% 

628 9.5% 

District 7 (South of UC) 

2,091 64.9% 

592 18.4% 

376 11.7% 

83 2.6% 

District 8 (SW Berk) 

 

2,257 37.0% 

1,778 29.1% 

1,333 21.8% 

416 6.8% 

Alameda County 

37.4% 

19.6% 

24.9% 

10.4% 

San Francisco* 

34.4% 

22.6% 

24.0% 

11.1% 

California* 

35.7%  

13.2% 

27.9%. 

12.2% 

*near final 

 

District results 

Sanders came in first in every Berkeley City Council district except District 5, where he came in second to Warren, 32.8% to 28.7%. His support was strongest among students. He won 64.9% in District 7, the student supermajority district south of the UC campus, topping 70% in 3 near campus consolidated precincts that include student dorms. Sanders also led by sizable margins in South and Central Berkeley. 

Warren’s best districts were districts 1 and 5, but she did relatively well everywhere but in District 7. Biden did best in the hills above Claremont Avenue in District 8, coming in first and winning 34% of the vote in the consolidated precinct that includes most of that area. He also did relatively well in the North East Berkeley hills, coming in first in one consolidated precinct there. The hills, home to Berkeley’ most affluent residents, have traditionally favored more moderate candidates. Even so, Elizabeth Warren did better than Biden in most of the northeast hills. She narrowly lost District 6, which includes the North East Berkeley hills to Bernie Sanders, who beat her by less than 1% by winning the southern, near campus portion of the district by a big margin. 

Bloomberg did not win much support in Berkeley despite the vast sums he spent in California. He topped 10% only in a few precincts in Districts 5, 6 and 8. 

 

Where they did best 

Sanders had defeated Clinton in Berkeley 54% to 45% in the 2016 primary. This year, with Elizabeth Warren on the ballot competing for progressive voters, Sanders' vote was lower than in 2016, when he received 22,933 votes. 

Sanders did better in Berkeley than he did in the rest of Alameda County; he won 37.4% of the countywide vote. He did better in Berkeley than he did in San Francisco and in Los Angeles County, which he won with 34.4% and 39.4% respectively. Statewide, Sanders finished first (with all but a few votes counted), getting 35.7% of the vote, almost 8% more than second place finsher Joe Biden. Among counties, Sanders did best in Humboldt and Mendocino counties, with 49.3 and 44.7% of the Democratic primary vote. 

While there were parts of California where Sanders did better than in Berkeley, there is no part of the state where Warren did better than in Berkeley. The 30% she received here was her best percentage in the whole state, at least for cities with over 100,000 residents. Statewide, she has managed only 13% of the vote counted so far, with only a few votes still left to count. 

 

Turnout 

Turnout in the Democratic Primary this year was higher than in the June 2016 Democratic Primary. The election in 2016 was held in June, when most students had left town for the summer and when Hilary Clinton’s nomination was a sure thing. In 2016, 42,476 votes were cast in the Democratic primary. This year, 49,874 cast votes in the party primary. As it typically the case with primary elections, turnout was below November election turnout. 65,430 votes were cast in the November 2016 presidential election in Berkeley, though this includes votes by people who are not Democrats. 

With UC students in town, more votes were cast this year in District 7, the student supermajority district, but turnout was still way below turnout in the other seven Berkeley Council districts. Democratic candidates received a total of 3223 votes in District 7. Turnout in other districts ranged from 5028 in District 4 (Central Berkeley), which also includes a substantial number of student residents in near campus precincts, and 8480 in District 5. The big turnout of younger voters that Sanders was hoping for did not happen in Berkeley. 

 

Few Votes for Trump 

Berkeleyans who voted in the Republican Primary cast a total of 521 votes for Donald Trump; 116 were cast for Bill Weld and there were scattered votes for other candidates. In June 2016, Trump had received 454 votes, with 306 votes for John Kasich. Trump’s Berkeley vote amounts to not much more than 1% of the number of votes cast for Democratic candidates.