Super Tuesday proved to be just as pivotal a day for the Democrats as expected, but not the way anyone predicted.
Joe Biden, all but left for dead just days ago, triumphed.
So it’s now a two-man race, and two white men in their 70s: Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former vice president Joe Biden.
Against all the apparent odds, Biden won the popular votes in eight states, including delegate-rich Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Virginia.
Texas was a huge surprise. Virtually all pre-primary projections had given Sanders a nearly rock-solid chance of runaway victory. Instead, Biden won.
Though votes are still being counted, the biggest prize of the night, California, went to Sanders. He also won his home state of Vermont, along with Colorado and Utah.
But the the popular vote was not the real issue of the day. That was how many delegates each candidate won for the Democratic Party’s national convention in July, which are allocated according to the percentage of the state each candidate won.
And despite the California loss, Tuesday was clearly Biden’s night.
In all, 14 states plus the territory of American Samoa took part in Super Tuesday primaries, with 1,357 delegates to the July convention up for grabs — roughly two-thirds of the 1,991 needed for the nomination.
Biden struck first. after polls began closing in the east, scoring significant victories in the South: Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee and Arkansas, each with large blocs of African American voters. And he went on from there.
Mike Bloomberg won a few delegates, but his billions were not enough to make much of a difference. He has vowed to support the eventual Democratic nominee against Trump, although he clearly has reservations about Sanders.
Elizabeth Warren got a couple of delegates but overall had a miserable night, not even winning her home state of Massachusetts.
It’s unclear where the Bloomberg and Warren campaigns may be headed: hang in, or drop out. Either way would significantly affect the continuing race.
Exit polling showed that many voters waited until the last minute — or at least the last days — to make up their minds.
“In Virginia, nearly half of Democratic primary voters said that they made up their minds about whom to support in the last few days before voting,” reported CNN. “In North Carolina, where about a third of votes were likely cast before Tuesday’s voting, nearly 3 in 10 still said they made up their minds in the last few days.”
Biden was aided by last-minute endorsements from former candidates Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, and by his appeal to African Americans. Klobuchar’s support almost certainly made the difference for the former vice president in Minnesota.
Biden also got a likely boost from the Big Tent Project Fund, an independent, non-profit Democratic group not required to disclose its donors, which reported spending nearly $870,000 on Tuesday on digital ads attacking Sanders — and bringing the group’s total anti-Sanders ads to $4.8 million in less than two weeks.
Exit polling showed that primary voters nearly everywhere put health care at the top of their policy priority lists. Those who favored “Medicare for all” generally supported Sanders; those favoring the so-called “public option” to choose either their existing private insurance or a government-funded plan went for Biden.
But overwhelmingly, Democrats made their main goal clear: defeating Donald Trump.
