mobanmarketFormer Vice President Joe Biden appeared to carry his momentum from his big win Saturday in South Carolina to Super Tuesday victories across the South and surprises in Massachusetts and Texas, but Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders scored the biggest victory of the night — delegate-rich California.
The Associated Press projected Sanders the winner of California as soon as the polls closed based on early projections. Texas, the second largest prize of the night, was a much tighter race. Biden and Sanders jockeyed for the lead in the Lone Star State throughout the evening before the Associated Press declared for Biden.
In addition to Massachusetts and Texas, Biden was projected to win Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Minnesota, while Sanders is projected to win Vermont, Colorado and Utah and California.
Delegates are awarded proportionately by state and congressional districts, so strong second-place showings were important. Biden’s Super Tuesday breakthrough put him in frontrunner status. However, California, with its 415 delegates, could put Sanders back on top once all the votes are counted. California polls closed at 8 p.m. PST, and it could be a day or more before final numbers are available.
“It’s still early, but things are looking awful, awful good,” Biden told cheering supporters in Los Angeles.
“We were told when we got to Super Tuesday it would be over, but maybe it was actually the other guy,” he added. “Tell that to the folks in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Oklahoma, Arkansas Minnesota…”
Speaking in Essex Junction, Vermont, Sanders was upbeat despite Biden’s strong showing. California proved to be his bulwark.
“Tonight I tell you with absolute confidence we are going to win the democratic nomination,” he told supporters, “and we are going defeat the most dangerous president in the history of this country.”
He added: “We are taking on the political establishment. But we are going to win because the people understand it is our campaign, our movement, that is best positioned to defeat Trump.”
He took shots at Biden for agreeing to trade agreements he said cost jobs and diminished wages, signaling he was prepared for a two-person race.
As in his big victory Saturday, Biden dominated the South with the support of African Americans and older voters, according to CNN exit polls.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and Mike Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, both fared poorly in most every voting state.
Bloomberg plans to reassess on Wednesday whether he should stay in the race after disappointing results in Tuesday’s primaries, The Associated Press reported.
A person close to the Bloomberg campaign confirmed the deliberations to the AP. The person wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter by name and requested anonymity.
About half of Democratic primary voters in Virginia and a majority of voters elsewhere said Biden is the candidate who would have the best chance of beating President Donald Trump in November, while roughly 2 in 10 had said Sanders would be best positioned to beat Trump, according to early exit polling conducted by The Washington Post.
Sanders led in polls in most states heading into voting Tuesday, but that was before candidates rallied behind Biden.
Shortly after polls closed in Massachusetts, network reports deemed it a three-way race with Biden, Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, one of the state’s senators, jostling for first. In the end, Biden pulled off a surprise victory.
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who dropped out of the race Monday, endorsed Biden at a rally in Dallas; Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, did the same.
Jeff Weaver, a senior adviser to Sanders, downplayed the significance of the endorsements, which also included a nod from former Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke.
During an appearance Tuesday morning on NBC’s “Today” show, Klobuchar said she considered herself, Buttigieg and O’Rourke “fresh faces for the party.”
“Look, being young does not make you not part of the establishment,” Weaver said Tuesday afternoon on MSNBC. “It’s about the ideas that you hold. You know, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar and Beto O’Rourke, frankly, all three of them, no disrespect to them, but they all articulated the ‘same old same old’ that Joe Biden is articulating.
“Except for their age, in many ways they were indistinguishable from Joe Biden, which is why a number of them had trouble getting traction in this race. So it’s not a surprise that they would support him, and in fact they do support the same old ideas that led to the election of Donald Trump.”
Voters will choose 1,357 committed delegates Tuesday — more than one-third of the total needed for the Democratic presidential nomination — presenting the potential that the race could be down to a few survivors once votes are counted. Indeed, it appears to be the Biden-Sanders battle now.
Biden entered Tuesday hoping that he could cut into Sanders’ lead in both states and grab the bulk of delegates in the South, where many voting states have large black populations, which carried him to victory in South Carolina.
“Bernie is the clear front-runner, but he’s got to get a lead, and a substantial lead, to consolidate his position,” Tad Devine, who worked for Sanders’ campaign in 2016 and who advised Andrew Yang this year, told The Washington Post prior to the vote.
Super Tuesday was voting day for Alabama, American Samoa, Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia and Democrats Abroad.
Their ballots will further shape the race as voters head to the polls March 17 in Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Ohio.
The tornadoes that hit Nashville and other parts of Tennessee on Monday night closed some polling places and voters were being redirected to other sites.
A spokeswoman for the Tennessee secretary of state said every county in the state has open polling locations.
“Our election officials have performed remarkably well under extremely difficult circumstances and as a result, every county in Tennessee has polling locations open for their voters,” Julia Bruck, the department’s director of communications, said in an email to The Washington Post.
Bloomberg, who news reports say has spent nearly $200 million on ads on Super Tuesday states and $500 million overall, was on the ballot for the first time, battling Biden for the center of the party.
At a rally at the West Palm Beach Convention Center, Bloomberg mentioned none of his Super Tuesday losses.
“Tonight, we proved something very important: We proved we can win the voters who will decide the general election. And isn’t that what this is all about?” he said.
Biden won almost 50 percent of the vote Saturday, well ahead of Sanders, who had 20 percent. Tom Steyer, the California billionaire, dropped out of the race after finishing a distant third and was soon followed to the exits by Buttigieg and Klobuchar.
The day after Biden won his first primary in South Carolina, his dumped big money on Facebook, as he poured more than $246,000 into the platform — the single biggest day of spending of his entire campaign, The New York Times reported.
Warren finished fifth in South Carolina in another failure of her campaign to show the organizational strength she had touted prior to the Iowa caucuses.
A candidate needs to win 1,991 pledged delegates to win the nomination. If no candidate reaches that number when all primaries and caucuses have ended, unpledged superdelegates — party leaders and officials — are allowed to vote.
In that case, a candidate must get 2,376 delegates to become the nominee, and many of the superdelegates would likely choose Biden over Sanders.
After his victory Saturday, Biden seemed to be looking toward a two-candidate race with Sanders.
He told supporters in Columbia that voters wanted more than rhetoric and took a shot at Sanders’ stance for ending employee-assisted insurance in favor of a government program of insurance for all. Voters, Biden said, want improvements to the Affordable Care Act rather than an overhaul of the health care system.
“If Democrats want a nominee who’s a Democrat, a lifelong Democrat, a proud Democrat, an Obama-Biden Democrat, join us,” Biden said. “We have the option of winning big or losing big. That’s the choice.”