A BIG NIGHT FOR BIDEN & SANDERS

As early Super Tuesday primary results began to pour in, it was clear that the night’s big winners were former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders. Biden picked up early wins in Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina, Alabama, and Oklahoma while Sanders easily secured New Hampshire and his home state of Vermont, then picked up Colorado a short time later.

Biden garnered 36.93% of the vote in the Sooner State, followed by Sanders with 24.38%, Michael Bloomberg with 14.82% and Elizabeth Warren with 13.08%. On the same ballot, voters in Tulsa County overwhelmingly approved a measure to allow liquor stores to open on Sundays.

Just after 9 pm Arkansas was declared for Biden, who had earlier won Minnesota, a state that a week earlier was a guarantee for native daughter Senator Amy Klobuchar. Klobuchar dropped out of the race on Monday, throwing her support to the former vice president.

Sanders picked up Utah while Biden won the progressive state of Massachusetts, overcoming Elizabeth Warren’s home court advantage. Maine and Texas could not be called early, and delegate rich California – a must win for Sanders – promised to award a substantial delegates to Biden as well.

32% of all voters in Texas were Latinos, a sign of that group’s incredible power at the polls in 2020. Sanders was banking on strong support from that demographic, as he had done earlier in Nevada.

For Michael Bloomberg, who spent nearly half a billion dollars of his own money betting on a strong Super Tuesday, the night was to prove disappointing, with Bloomberg only winning the territory of American Samoa. He did, however, do well enough to secure delegates, albeit not enough to pose a serious challenge going forward.

Neither Biden nor Sanders attained enough delegates on Super Tuesday to secure the party’s nomination, but Biden more than any other candidate exceeded expectations and made it truly a two person race between now and the August Democratic convention.