What Went Down On Super Tuesday

Here are a few findings from the preliminary exit polls in Virginia, which has just been called for Biden. About half the electorate said they decided who to vote for in the last few days, and Biden won 52 percent of that group compared to just 20 percent for Sanders. However, before we go too wild about how much Biden surged in the past few days, Biden won 45 percent among those said they decided before the last few days, still ahead of Sanders’s 30 percent. Another eye-opening stat: Biden won 75 percent among those who said they wanted a return to Obama’s policies, a group that made up 43 percent of the electorate. Biden also won basically everywhere around the commonwealth, including a 45 percent to 27 percent edge over Sanders in the affluent D.C. suburbs, which made up about one-third of the primary vote.

Welp, polls just closed, but based on analysis of the exit poll, ABC News projects that Sanders will win the Vermont primary and Biden will win Virginia.

In most of the early states, both Biden and Sanders have had an advantage with nonwhite voters — Biden with black voters and Sanders with Hispanic voters. (New Hampshire and Iowa didn’t have enough nonwhite voters to break out candidate support among black and Hispanic voters.) But both Buttigieg and Klobuchar did better among white voters than with voters of color. It will be interesting to see whether their endorsements of Biden will bolster his performance among white voters that would have otherwise supported the two of them, or whether Sanders will pick up some of this support.