Democrats of the First Congressional District cast votes for their delegates during the statewide caucus on Sunday, May 1.

The top six delegates elected in the caucus will attend the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in July.

Bob Mulholland, a Democratic strategist and superdelegate, said the caucus is different from other elections.

“These caucuses are designed for candidates who want to be delegates to organize. They’re not for regular democrats,” he said. “On election day, millions of democrats will vote in California. Maybe today 30,000 to 50,000 voted in caucuses.”

The Democratic delegates elected will represent the 13 Northern California counties that make up the First Congressional District, or CD1.

“In every congressional district there’s one or two caucuses,” Mulholland said. “Our congressional district had two.”

The Bernie Sanders Caucus took place at the Chico Grange Hall on Nord Avenue.

Caucuses like the two in Chico played out across California on Sunday.

California is proving to be an important state in the race to the presidential nomination.

As primary season winds down, Clinton and Sanders are vying for the requisite number of delegates to win the Democratic presidential nomination.

According to Bloomberg Politics, Clinton currently has 2,165 delegates and Sanders is trailing with 1,357 delegates. A candidate must have 2,383 delegates to win the nomination.

California has 548 delegates to award in the June 7 primary.

The Clinton Caucus

At the Hillary Clinton Caucus at the ARC Pavilion on Park Avenue, 211 people cast ballots ranking the top six delegates from among 19 candidates.

The results are:

Jane Dolan: 205 votes

Michael Worley: 160 votes

Jane Martin: 157 votes

Justin Meyers: 149 votes

Mamie Dinani: 129 votes

Jenita Johnson Rodriguez: 79 votes

Jane Dolan, also the wife of Mulholland, is a longtime supporter of Clinton. She is a Chico State graduate and former Associated Students president.

“I believe (Clinton) needs to be our president,” she said.

Dolan was also a Clinton delegate in 2008.

At the DNC, Dolan plans to attend strategy meetings and delve into the campaign.

“I want to bring those lessons back here,” she said.

California will play a leading role in the last months of the race for the nomination. Delegates are calculated according to population, and California, as the most populous state, has the largest number of delegates to award.

“California is going to be organization,” said Michael Worley, a Clinton delegate. “California is going to be about who turns the people out, who motivates people to turn out.”

California has 53 Congressional Districts and 548 delegates at stake. As opposed to other winner-take-all states, delegates are awarded by popular vote in each district in California.

“You have all these counties and then there’s L.A. County which is literally bigger than Georgia,” Worley said. “And California is still 2 million (people) bigger than Texas.”

In comparison to California’s delegate-rich territory, Texas has 251 delegates in all, and Georgia has 117.

Thus, California’s delegates will have a hand in the results of the Democratic presidential nomination this summer.

The DNC

At the DNC, delegates’ votes are bound to their declared candidate, but superdelegates have a flexible vote.

The results of the June 7 primary election will determine how many delegates from CD1 will attend the DNC pledged to Clinton or Sanders.

Molly Sullivan can be reached at [email protected] or @SullivanMollyM on Twitter.