What Went Down On Super Tuesday

I’m thinking that I personally have focused too much on race/ideology/age and not enough on region in this primary. Sanders did terribly in the South in 2016. And it seems like he is doing poorly in the South in 2020, based on what we know about Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. And part of that story is about race (lots of black voters in these states, and they have backed Clinton/Biden). But the Virginia and North Carolina exit polls tonight suggest he is losing the Southern white vote in those states too.

It’ll be awhile before we know what’s happening in Tennessee, but our forecast pegs Biden as the favorite in Tennessee with about a 2 in 3 (68 percent) chance of winning statewide, though Sanders also has a real shot at finishing first, with a 1 in 4 (25 percent) chance. Biden has a forecasted statewide vote of 34 percent, on average, ahead of Sanders’s 27 percent. But the results by congressional district will also matter for delegate allocation purposes, and unlike in some of the other Southern states, Biden’s and Sanders’s vote shares are neck-and-neck in some districts, with Sanders even leading in a few. Here is our forecasted vote share for each candidate in each district:

Looking at the ideological breakdown of Virginia’s primary vote, data from the preliminary exit polls found that Biden won by 20 or more points among the two largest segments of the Democratic electorate: somewhat liberal and moderate voters, who made up about 70 percent of all voters. But Sanders did beat Biden among the one-fifth or so of the electorate who called themselves very liberal.