Hillary and Sanders

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton on Tuesday in West Virginia’s primary, winning over voters deeply sceptical about the economy and signalling the difficulty Clinton may have in industrial states in the general election.

Both candidates however split the delegates available, with Sanders winning 16, while Hillary got 11.

The loss slows Clinton’s march to the nomination, but she is still heavily favoured to become the Democratic candidate in the Nov. 8 election.

With West Virginia delegates added, Clinton still leads Sanders in pledged delegates, with 1,716, while Sanders has 1430. Clinton however widens the gap with super-delegates of 523, to Sanders 39. This brings the overall delegate tally to Clinton 2239, Sanders 1469.

To secure the Democratic nomination, a candidate needs 2,383 delegates.

Clinton and Sanders will compete in another primary contest on May 17. Both candidates are also looking ahead to the June 7 contests, the last in the long nominating season, in which nearly 700 delegates are at stake, including 475 in California, where Sanders is now focusing his efforts.

Sanders has vowed to take his campaign all the way to the Democrats’ July 25-28 convention in Philadelphia, and wants a say in shaping the party’s platform.

In a November match-up with Donald Trump, Clinton will need to win over working-class voters in the U.S. Rust Belt, which includes key states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Deep concerns about the economy underscored West Virginia’s Democratic primary. Roughly six in 10 voters said they were very worried about the direction of the U.S. economy in the next few years. The same proportion cited the economy and jobs was their most important voting issue, according to a preliminary ABC News exit poll.

A remark Clinton made at an Ohio town hall in March that the country would “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business” at an Ohio town hall in a comment may have hurt her with voters in coal-mining states such as West Virginia.

During Clinton’s visit to West Virginia and Ohio last week she repeatedly apologised to displaced coal and steel workers for her comment, which she said had been taken out of context, and discussed her plan to help retrain coal workers for clean energy jobs.