Super Tuesday narrows field
A resurgent Joe Biden scored sweeping victories across the country with the backing of a diverse coalition, while progressive rival Bernie Sanders seized Super Tuesday’s biggest prize with a win in California yesterday, as the Democratic Party’s once-crowded presidential field suddenly transformed into a twoman contest.
The pair were battling for delegates as 14 states and one US territory held a series of highstakes elections that marked the most significant day of voting in the party’s 2020 presidential nomination fight.
Sanders and Biden were locked in a tight race in Texas, with votes still being counted.
The other two high-profile candidates still in the shrinking field, New York billionaire Mike Bloomberg and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, were teetering on the edge of viability.
Warren finished an embarrassing third in her home state, and Bloomberg planned to reassess his candidacy after spending more than half a billion dollars to score a single victory – in American Samoa.
The result – with Biden winning at least eight states and Sanders four – raised questions about whether the Democratic primary contest would stretch all the way to the July convention or be decided much sooner.
Biden leveraged a blowout victory in South Carolina to score sweeping victories yesterday that transcended geography, class and race.
He also cemented his status as the standard bearer for the Democrats’ establishment wing.
The former vice-president showed strength in the Northeast with a win in Massachusetts, won Minnesota in the upper Midwest, and finished on top across the South in Virginia, Alabama, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas, in addition to Oklahoma.
While he scored the night’s biggest delegate prize in California, Sanders scored just three other decisive victories, winning his home state of Vermont, along with Utah and Colorado.
Sanders’ success was built on a base of energised liberals, young people and Latinos.
A key to Biden’s success was black voters – he won 60 per cent of the black vote in Alabama, where African-Americans made up more than half the Democratic electorate.