What Went Down In Michigan, Washington And Other Democratic Primaries

Six states voted tonight — including Michigan, tonight’s delegate prize — and while we’re still waiting on calls in Idaho, North Dakota and Washington, we’re calling it a night. Biden’s sizable wins in Michigan, Missouri and Mississippi point toward yet another rout. In the states where we don’t have a call yet, things are more up in the air (Biden has a lead in Idaho, but it is currently shrinking). Even still, if these last three states end up in Sanders’s win column, Biden will still lead the delegate race.

We don’t want to be overly dramatic, but it does seem as if the writing is on the wall for Sanders’s campaign after tonight. And that’s because if he was going to mount a comeback, he needed to start tonight. Some of the most favorable states for Sanders left on the primary calendar voted tonight, which means things moving forward are only going to get harder, not easier. We do have a debate between Biden and Sanders this Sunday, which might help move the needle some, but the delegate math is not currently in Sanders’s favor.

Here are some headlines from the live blog crew. As always, scroll back through to relive the live blog in all its chronological glory:

• Nathaniel: Sanders Needed A Miracle. He Didn’t Get One.
• Perry: The Revolution Will Have To Wait Another 4 To 8 Years
• Geoffrey: Mini Tuesday Was Sandersdämmerung
• Kaleigh: A Super Tuesday Sequel As Biden Continues To Rake Up Delegates And Win States
• Amelia: Biden Wraps Up Mini Tuesday With A Win In Michigan And An Endorsement From Andrew Yang

There really isn’t even that much to say at this point. Although Biden’s surge in the polls has been remarkably fast, this is not a terribly close primary at this point — it’s much less close than it was in 2016, which wasn’t that close — and there’s no indication that it’s getting closer. Biden’s support is quite geographically robust, and even if there were a massive shift back toward Sanders, we’re at the point where it might be coming too late. If the states set to vote over the next two weeks were good ones for Sanders, that might leave at least a little bit of an opening. But instead, this is one of the worst stretches of the calendar for him. He’s going to lose a lot of delegates in Florida and Georgia, in particular.

Sanders needed another huge polling miss in Michigan like the one in 2016, but lightning did not strike twice. Instead, Biden looks to have won the state fairly comfortably while also picking up easy wins in Mississippi and Missouri. These results, coupled with Biden’s big lead in the latest national polls, suggest that he could very well be uncatchable in the Democratic primary race. The calendar gets even harder for Sanders next week, and it will be interesting to see just how much longer the race remains ostensibly competitive. I’m not betting against Sanders to drop out soon, but it does seem like we’re getting close to the conclusion of the 2020 Democratic nomination contest.

Sanders gambled on Michigan. He traveled all over the state in the days leading up the primary at the expense of campaigning in other places, so his loss there tonight is that much more symbolic. I keep going back to what I heard from Michigan voters over the past few days — a sense of primary fatigue, alarm over the fighting among the candidates as the contest got heated and a desire to start gearing up for the battle against Trump. Plenty of voters admitted that Biden wasn’t their first choice, but they seemed more than happy with him as their candidate. And that, I think, will make it hard for Sanders to keep fighting.

If anyone knows Idaho, Canyon County is where Nampa is.

Yeah, Nathaniel — Canyon County is the second-most populous county in the state and it hasn’t reported anything beyond initial results. It appears there should still be at least a couple thousand more votes from there, and Sanders does have a slim lead in the initial totals. But there are more votes left in Ada.

Personally, I think Idaho looks pretty good for Biden, but I am waiting on Canyon County and Ada County (around Boise) to fully report before I call it a night.

The party’s rally around Biden post-South Carolina, his wins on Super Tuesday and the wave of endorsements in the days since combined to make it really, really hard for Sanders. I anticipated that Sanders was going to struggle to win many states after Super Tuesday, and tonight suggests that is correct. The big question is now is where do Sanders and the party establishment go? The party people want him to quit as soon as possible. Sanders has more strength if he runs for a while, accumulates more delegates and argues that, at 30 to 35 percent support nationally, he speaks for one-third of the party. But it’s hard to keep your supporters going and the media covering you extensively if everyone assumes you are losing.

Tonight felt more like a coda to Super Tuesday than a turning point. Biden continued to ride the momentum he built in the last two weeks, while Sanders continued to underperform. The delegate counts are still close enough that I can see Sanders taking once last swing in Sunday’s debate, but I can understand why progressives are feeling discouraged tonight. In 2016, we still had a fight on our hands this early in the race. Tonight, especially with the loss in Michigan, shows that’s not the case in 2020.

Doesn’t seem like there’s been new reporting in Washington for a bit, so it seems increasingly likely that there’s no end in sight there (which we sort of knew anyway).

We were talking earlier about the Sanders campaign’s next moves and Politico is now reporting that while his campaign won’t address supporters this evening, they do plan to participate in Sunday’s debate:

Three of North Dakota’s 14 polling places, plus mail ballots, are now reporting, and Sanders holds a 45 percent to 34 percent lead over Biden.

We are trying to pin down the reason for Idaho tightening and we think it’s Latah County reporting, which is home to the University of Idaho.

Indeed! And as Amelia and I wrote last May, black Democrats are more likely to be religious. In Mississippi, the preliminary exit poll showed just 13 percent never attend religious services. But there, Biden won all groups handily, even that one, even though his margin was somewhat smaller than among regular churchgoers (where he won by … almost 80 points).

Laura, that’s a good reminder that while there is a rising number of religiously unaffiliated voters, most of whom identify with the Democratic Party or lean toward it, a lot of Democrats (particularly African American voters) are actively religious, to some extent.

Idaho has tightened; Biden’s lead down to about 4 points there.

One more tidbit from the preliminary Missouri exit poll! About one-third of voters tonight said they never attended religious services, and that was the only group in which Sanders and Biden were essentially tied. Among those who attended at least once a week or more or occasionally — one-third each — Biden beat Sanders by over 40 points.

It’s hard to sum up tonight when we still don’t know who will win half the states, although I guess we know that Biden will pad his delegate lead a bit. But I can sum up the Democratic primary race: Biden will be the nominee, although I would have said the same thing before tonight too. Basically, what tonight did was confirm that Biden is leading in the states we think he is leading in. His win in Michigan tonight was especially good for him, as it confirmed that there wasn’t some hidden reservoir of Sanders support in the industrial Midwest. In short, tonight’s results were consistent with a national Biden lead of ~20 points, and that is game over.

All right, folks, I think we’re getting close to wrapping up the live blog, as it doesn’t look as if we’ll get final results from Washington (which is essentially tied), North Dakota or Idaho (although Biden does seem to have a fairly healthy margin) this evening. Give me your final takes. What stood out to you this evening? And what are you thinking about as the primary moves forward to next week?

Minot County just came in from North Dakota, the first returns in the state apart from the vote-by-mail precinct, and had Sanders winning 523-441. I think North Dakota might actually be his best chance for a win tonight, apart from Democrats Abroad.

Earlier I wrote that there wasn’t an education divide between Biden and Sanders, but the preliminary Missouri exit poll shows that there may be an income divide. Biden did markedly better among voters with higher incomes — although he still managed to win the lowest income group overall, given his strength in the state.

The place to keep a close eye on in Idaho is Ada County, home to Boise, the state’s capital and its largest city. It’s provided about half the vote in Idaho so far. Ada gave Clinton 40 percent of her statewide vote total in the 2016 general election. At the moment, Biden only leads in Ada by 45 percent to 43 percent over Sanders with about one-third of precincts reporting, but Biden leads statewide 46 percent to 39 percent.

Yeah, Nathaniel, it looks like Sanders may well fall short of 15 percent in both the 2nd and 3rd Congressional districts in Mississippi.

With 97 percent of precincts reporting in Mississippi, Sanders is at 14.9 percent of the vote, which would not be enough to qualify for statewide delegates. ABC is currently assigning 28 Mississippi delegates to Biden, with eight TBD.

So far on the night, ABC is projecting that Biden has won 120 pledged delegates, while Sanders has won 64. However, 181 delegates remain unallocated.

Both Biden and Sanders have been doing slightly better among voters without a college degree than among voters with a degree. How does that shake out now that they’re the two main candidates remaining? Well … there doesn’t seem to be much of an education divide for either candidate in Mississippi and Missouri. But could it be that once that the candidates who did better with college voters dropped out, education is no longer such a dividing line in the primary?

North Dakota wasn’t a caucus, but it was still run by the state party, and it looks like the counting is going slowly à la Iowa and Nevada. More than three hours after polls closed, we still only have the results for mail ballots.

We’ve got about one-third of Idaho’s results in, and CNN’s map looks pretty promising for Biden.

Now a decent number of votes reported in Idaho and Sanders is down nearly 10 points there. And Biden’s support also seems to be pretty well-distributed, geographically. Probably going to be another win for Biden.

And one other stat — Clinton won a little more than 1.7 million total votes in the 2016 general election against Trump in Washington. Yet there might be as many as 2 million Democratic votes in the primary this cycle? That seems remarkable, no matter how fast Washington may be growing!

As we watch results come in from Washington, remember that Democrats also used a caucus there in 2016 (Sanders won by 45 points). But Washington also had a presidential primary that the GOP used to allocate delegates that featured a meaningless “beauty contest” for Democrats that Clinton won by 5 points. While it didn’t count for anything, the 2016 primary result could be a decent indicator of how competitive the state will be tonight because 800,000 people voted in it, compared to the 230,000 people who participated in the Democratic caucuses in 2016. However, as Nathaniel pointed out, based on the ballot totals, there’s a good chance more than twice as many people will participate in this year’s primary — which counts this time around — so don’t read too much into it.

Idaho is one of the states that switched from a caucus in 2016 to a primary this year. In the 2016 caucuses, 23,884 people participated. With 19 percent of precincts reporting so far tonight, 26,536 votes have already been counted in the primary.

I wonder if the aforementioned Sanders press people are just feeling rough about things — it’s tough when a campaign you’ve worked so hard on suddenly starts losing every primary. I don’t know that I buy that they’re necessarily executing some sort of strategy so much as venting a bit.

As of 5 p.m. Pacific today, Washington state was reporting that more than 1.8 million voters had returned their ballots. Some are undoubtedly still in the mail as well, since ballots can be postmarked as late as Election Day and still count. I’d expect a final vote total approaching 2 million. So far, just over a million votes have been counted, so Washington is about halfway reporting.

CNN shows a tight race across Washington between Sanders and Biden.

We now have 11 percent of precincts reporting in Idaho, and Biden is ahead of Sanders 44 percent to 34 percent.

Looks like Sanders has cracked 15 percent in Mississippi with 95 percent of precincts reporting and will earn one delegate there.

Although this is a good point from friend-of-the-site Kyle Kondik.

So maybe mid-to-late ballots, like those mailed late last week, will favor Biden, and those haven’t been counted yet either.

I would probably expect late-arriving ballots in Washington to favor Sanders? Young voters tend to wait until the last minute to mail in their ballots. In California, Biden has gained in late ballots, but as we have documented, late deciders on Super Tuesday broke heavily for Biden, which wasn’t the case today.

Ooh, the Associated Press just got another big vote dump in Washington, and Biden and Sanders are now at 32.7 percent of the vote each!

Because so many people in Washington voted a week ago (or even earlier!), several candidates who have withdrawn from the race are getting a good chunk of votes. Warren is at 13 percent, Bloomberg 10 percent, Buttigieg 5 percent and Klobuchar 3 percent. Of course, those numbers will almost certainly drop as more recent ballots are tallied in the coming days.

According to the preliminary Washington exit poll — which, as we mentioned earlier, is actually a phone poll — 35 percent would be enthusiastic if Biden was the nominee, the same share as for Sanders. But — and this is interesting, given that Washington is more favorable territory for Sanders — another 42 percent would be satisfied with Biden as the nominee, compared to only 31 percent who would be satisfied with Sanders.

The first big cache of votes has dropped in Washington, and it shows a close race: Sanders 34 percent, Biden 33 percent. Remember, Washington is a vote-by-mail state, so we don’t know how much more we’re going to get tonight (although it definitely won’t be the whole state).

Meanwhile, here’s what Sanders’s press secretary has to say about the debate:

I think Amelia is right. It probably needs to be Sanders’s call, in a way, because the DNC calling it off unilaterally feeds into the “rigged” narrative. Then again, I could see them canceling it regardless, figuring this was a clear enough win that people won’t get too caught up in it.

If the debate doesn’t happen, I think it has to be because Sanders chose to drop out. Canceling the debate will just rile up Sanders’s supporters and spur calls of unfairness.

So what are the odds that the debate on Sunday won’t happen?

We also now have a small number of initial returns from both Washington and Idaho, which are looking too close to call at this early stage.

With 75 percent of precincts reporting in Michigan, Biden is widening his lead — it’s now 53 percent to 39 percent. Notably, two-thirds of Wayne County, the state’s most populous county and home to many people who make up Biden’s base, is now in.