Former Vice President Joe Biden strengthened his lead in delegates Tuesday, winning four of six states voting in presidential primaries, and delivering a blow to Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is fighting to keep his flagging campaign alive.
Biden’s big prize was a win in Michigan, which has 125 of the 352 delegates at stake in primaries also held in Washington, Mississippi, Missouri and Idaho and North Dakota’s caucus. Biden also won Mississippi, Missouri and Idaho.
The race in Washington was nearly evenly tied at 1:30 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time Wednesday, and Sanders had a slight lead. North Dakota Democratic Party officials expected it to be Wednesday before votes were tallied.
Biden’s wins build on a quickly assembled coalition of moderate and establishment voters after commanding South Carolina and Super Tuesday primary victories. He went into Tuesday’s voting with a lead in the delegate count with 664, compared with the 573 Sanders has amassed so far.
Most of the attention Tuesday went to Michigan, the top prize with 125 of the 352 delegates at stake among the six states, which also include Washington (89 delegates), Missouri (68 delegates), Mississippi (36), Idaho (20) and North Dakota (14). To win the nomination, a candidate must have 1,991 pledged delegates.
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Michigan and Washington are make-or-break states for Sanders, the progressive left’s last hope in the Democrats’ nominating campaign. Biden is leading in the delegate count with 664, compared with the 573 that the Vermont independent has amassed so far.
Clawing his way back to front-runner status isn’t impossible for Sanders under Democrats’ primary system of apportioning delegates, as opposed to Republicans’ winner-take-all system. But he needs to capture a big share of delegates in Michigan and Washington, states he won in his 2016 presidential bid. Washington voters overwhelmingly sided with Sanders four years ago, and he upset establishment candidate Hillary Clinton in Michigan.
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Sanders canceled weekend rallies in Mississippi and Missouri to focus on Michigan a solidly “purple” state that neither candidate is taking for granted.
Flanked Monday on a high school gymnasium stage in Detroit by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and former bitter primary rivals Sens. Kamala Harris of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey, Biden declared himself a “bridge” to the future generations of leaders.
“Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else,” Biden said. “There’s an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country.”
For many voters, Tuesday’s choice comes down to which candidate they think has the best chance of defeating President Donald Trump in November. Both Biden and Sanders claim they’re best-positioned.
Michigan is a test for Biden, too, and will test his strength among black and union voters against Sanders’ call for sweeping change and political revolution. In the 2016 general election, Trump won Michigan’s 16 electoral votes, as well as those in other Rust Belt states Biden is banking on taking this year.
A Detroit Free Press poll that showed Biden with a 24-point lead over Sanders, 51 percent to 27 percent, gave the former vice president a boost heading into Tuesday’s voting in Michigan.
Sanders, who has won all of the Western states that have held primaries so far this year, has better polling odds in Washington, but still trails Biden in a Data for Progress poll poll, 47 percent to 44 percent among likely voters — but within the poll’s error margin of 3.6 points.
Sanders could also gain ground in the delegate race in Missouri, a state he lost by less than a percentage point in 2016, essentially splitting the state’s 68 delegates with Clinton.
Roy Temple, a former Missouri Democratic Party chairman and a consultant for Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s now-suspended campaign, told the Kansas City Star the Missouri presidential primary could be “a real nail-biter if history is any guide.”
“We’ve seen this movie before,” Temple told The Star. “There was a pretty stark ideological distinction between Bernie and Hillary, and it was a tie.”
Noting that polling data has been volatile after Biden’s Super Tuesday surge, the election forecasting site FiveThirtyEight said Biden leads in both Missouri and Mississippi, but margins matter. In Missouri, the FiveThirtyEight forecast gave Biden a 92 percent of chance of winning, with an average forecast 58 percent vote share, compared with an 8 percent shot at winning for Sanders and a 39 percent vote share.
In Mississippi, FiveThirtyEight forecast Biden has a near-lock, with a 99 in 100 chance of winning the state with a 65 percent of the statewide vote, compared with 25 percent for Sanders. Mississippi allocates 36 of its pledged delegates to the national convention on the statewide total, and the remaining 23 are allocated according to votes in its four congressional districts.
Biden, who was leading Sanders by 30 points in all congressional districts, stood to collect a large share of Mississippi’s district-level delegates, according to FiveThirtyEight.
Idaho Democrats are using a primary for the first time to decide how to split up the state’s 2o delegates. Sanders defeated Clinton in the caucus four years ago, and President Barack Obama easily defeated Clinton in 2008.
A primary could boost voter turnout in Idaho, the Idaho Statesman reported, but either candidate would face tough odds against Trump in November. The last time Democratic presidential candidate to win Idaho in the general election was Lyndon Johnson in 1964.
FiveThirtyEight forecasts favor Biden in North Dakota, where he was expected to pick up 57 percent of the vote in the state’s Democratic caucus.