District of Columbia voters chose electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote, pitting the Republican Party's nominee, businessman Donald Trump, and running mate Indiana Governor Mike Pence against Democratic Party nominee, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and her running mate Virginia Senator Tim Kaine.

Notably, Clinton's 86.77-point margin of victory also represented the largest secured by any major-party presidential candidate, in any jurisdiction, since Franklin D. Roosevelt's landslide re-election in 1944 in Mississippi.

[6] Although Barack Obama's approval rating in the RealClearPolitics poll tracking average remained between 40 and 50 percent for most of his second term, it experienced a surge in early 2016 and reached its highest point since 2012 during June of that year.

In October 2015, his running-mate and two-term Vice President Biden decided not to enter the race for the Democratic presidential nomination either.

On March 30, ten weeks ahead of the Washington D.C. primary, NBC affiliate News 4 reported that the Democratic Party's D.C. State Committee had submitted registration paperwork for listing presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on the primary ballots a day late, even though the Sanders campaign had correctly and timely registered with the state party.

[15] As the D.C. Council announced it would hold an emergency vote to put Sanders back on the ballots,[16] and with Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta asking to make sure an administrative error wouldn't exclude a candidate, D.C. Democratic Party chairwoman Anita Bonds told CNN that "Bernie will be on the ballot."