What Went Down On Super Tuesday

Well, it’ll still be days or weeks before we have the full vote total in California, and it’s still too close to call in Maine, but with Texas now in the win column for Biden, this evening’s top-line takeaway is even clearer: Biden mounted a comeback and won Super Tuesday.

In total, Biden won nine of the 15 primary contests at stake tonight, pulling off a number of upset victories, including a win in Minnesota (we’d projected Sanders would win there), a win in Massachusetts (Sanders again), and a win in Texas (that was more of a toss-up going into tonight), but basically Biden cleaned up across the board. He performed well in states where he wasn’t even really competing, and he proved he’s more than a regional candidate.

Sanders, on the other hand, did not have a great evening. He won just three states outright (Colorado, Utah and Vermont) and underperformed expectations. So far, he does seem on track to win delegate-rich California, though we won’t know the exact margin for a while yet.

Once all the Super Tuesday results are fully counted, 38 percent of delegates will have been awarded in the primary race, but this nomination fight is far from over, and there’s a real question about where it will go from here.

To relive the liveblog in all its chronological glory, scroll back through, but if that’s too much work, here are some headlines from the live blog crew:

• Nate: Biden Is The Favorite For The Nomination, Just Like We Said in January (Hopefully You Slept Through February?)
• Geoffrey: Super Tuesday Was A Big Effing Deal For Joe Biden
• Clare: Biden His Time No More: Joe’s Super Tuesday Landslide (mine is a New York Post headline)
• Nathaniel: Biden’s Momentum Continues With A Coalition-Expanding Super Tuesday Win
• Kaleigh: Biden Surge Continues Through Super Tuesday, With Sanders On His Tail
• Micah: Biden Pulls Off Historic Turnaround — He And Sanders Battle For Nomination
• Meena: Democrats Winnowed The Field — To Biden And Sanders

Watch our reaction podcast here:

Since ABC News has now called Texas for Biden, we can dig into the crosstabs of the preliminary exit poll. And what they show is that Texas really exemplifies how much Biden’s and Sanders’s support differs by age and race — especially age. Sanders has a huge lead among white and Hispanic voters under 45, while Biden does well among black voters over 30. Biden also leads among white voters over 45, but by less, and Hispanic voters over 45 are more evenly divided between the two.

And ABC News has called Texas for Biden!

I like how Nate says “I was feeling contrarian earlier” as though he doesn’t always feel contrarian.

Assuming Biden does in fact win Texas, this night went basically as well for him as it conceivably could have. Everything came together, from the withdrawals and endorsements by Buttigieg and Klobuchar, to the surge of late-deciding voters backing his candidacy in a diverse set of states, giving him a broader coalition. The race is probably far from over, but Biden may now be the favorite. Yet there are still a lot of contests to come, including some big ones on March 10 and 17, and I think it’ll be important to see whether it becomes a true head-to-head race between Biden and Sanders or whether things continue to be more fragmented, with Bloomberg and Warren staying in.

I was feeling contrarian earlier, Laura, and was going to point out that Sanders could make a big comeback in Michigan. But everyone on this ABC set has been saying the same thing. So now the true contrarian position (not necessarily the right position, but the contrarian one!) is that Biden will win surprisingly easily in Michigan and then in the other big swing states the following week. Not all nomination fights last until the bitter end.

This was a really good night for Biden, undeniably. Aside from overperforming in states we knew he’d do well in, he also managed some wins in states we expected to go to Sanders. That said, when you add up the delegates (when we finally have a full count), we still have plenty of election ahead of us, and Biden will need to build on this momentum. Beyond the results, the delays and long lines in both California and Texas raised major red flags for me. These are issues that simply need to be addressed if we don’t want an even more chaotic night in eight months.

A few final thoughts:

1. The Biden turnaround over the last week and a half or so — exemplified by the polls coming into Tuesday and the early vs. late-deciding voting numbers today — has been pretty stunning.
2. What will Bloomberg and Warren do?
3. I think we’re still headed for a delegate-by-delegate fight, but I’m not sure about that. But Biden may be the front-runner in that fight, not Sanders.
4. There are some truly interesting and important fault lines in the Democratic electorate — black voters are more with Biden, Hispanic voters more with Sanders; old voters are more with Biden, young voters are more with Sanders; moderate voters are more with Biden; very liberal voters are more with Sanders. And then, men disproportionately support Sanders, so will we see a gender gap open up with Biden now too (which hasn’t shown up consistently yet).
5. I’m 😴

It was certainly a good night for Biden, both by number of states won (he could win as many as 10 of the 15 states and territories) and delegates collected (although we’ll have to wait a while to know tonight’s final totals). That said, I would like to know the final California results (which could be quite good for Sanders) before declaring it a “really, really good” Biden night. I’m also curious to see where Bloomberg and Warren go from here; Warren looks like she’s not going to get many delegates, and Bloomberg is reportedly going to “reassess” his campaign.

Should I be the contrarian who asks whether we’re calling this too early? If Sanders ends up winning California once mail-in ballots are counted … what would that mean? How far would the “Biden victory” narrative have carried Biden by then?

All right, it looks as if we’re about to get a Texas projection from more outlets soon. (NBC has just called it for Biden.) What are the key takeaways from tonight? Is it as simple as … this was a really, really good night for Biden? Where do you see the race going from here?

Not an ABC call yet, but NBC News has called Texas for Biden.

Not sure if that’s a compliment, Nathaniel.

It’s not clear that Maine will be called soon.

Your voice just puts me right to sleep, Galen.

Hey there podcast listeners! We just recorded our Super Tuesday reaction podcast if you want something to listen to as you drift off to sleep.

Biden’s success tonight wasn’t slowed down by his lack of investment in a Super Tuesday ground game — he had offices in just five states and had a much smaller network of field offices than Bloomberg and Sanders.

Prediction markets — which, yeah, I know, but forecasting election night returns is one of the things they seem to be pretty good at — now have Biden up to a 97 percent chance to win Texas. And Decision Desk HQ has called it for Biden. Other outlets haven’t.

It appears the Young Turks won’t be getting their first member of Congress, based on early results in the special election for California’s 25th Congressional District. Cenk Uygur only has about 5 percent of the vote, way back from the 20-plus percent that three other candidates have. I don’t think more places reporting will save him.

While the night’s biggest surprises for Biden are his wins in Minnesota and Massachusetts, the largest margin between his vote share and our latest projections so far are in Alabama. With 79 percent of precincts reporting, he’s won 63 percent of the vote in Alabama — 19 points higher than the 44 percent average our model projected when we froze it at 9:30 this morning.

Well, historically, Laura, being a VP wasn’t a bad stepping stone for the presidency as Nathaniel has written for the site. Neither was being a governor — except that was not the case this year with Jay Inslee, Steve Bullock and John Hickenlooper all dropping out over the summer.

If Biden surfs this wave to the nomination, will the position of vice president become more attractive to politicians in the future? Given that his VP experience is arguably a big component of his success in this race.

“Support” Medicare for All could mean a lot of things, though, so his pick might not be a cosponsor.

Sanders said his VP pick would support Medicare for All — and Harris is a cosponsor on his Medicare for All legislation.

The idea of balancing the ticket is kind of an establishment move, too, though. Sanders might prefer to go his own way and, like Geoffrey suggested, double down. I don’t know who that would be though, if I’m being perfectly honest.

That’s fair, Nate. But one key argument for Warren as Sanders’s VP, I think, goes back to something Meredith and Amelia were talking about earlier. Sanders’s support from men tends to be much higher than his support from women. And although it’s less true now because she’s lost support overall — and it’s not entirely clear that there is such a thing as a “woman’s vote” — this is something Warren could theoretically help Sanders with, at least image-wise.

I mean, I’d think Kamala Harris would be a good VP for him Clare. Or Cory Booker. Some fairly mainstream (but not centrist) politician, someone young, someone well-credentialed. A traditional VP pick.

I will say that I’d be kind of surprised if the vice presidential pick isn’t a bit younger than either Biden or Sanders, if one wins the Democratic nomination. I’m not sure Warren would meet that standard, though she’s younger than they are.

Let’s let the readers decide …

I can’t see it happening in a practical way, but I can understand why it’s the obvious question. In many ways, they blame each other for shortcomings in their own campaigns, and I think it’s hard to go from that to running mates overnight.

I suspect we’ll see a lot of doubling down from Sanders, so picking Warren would be that to some extent. So it wouldn’t shock me.

So Nate, in that case, who do you see as Sanders potential VPs?

Which is more likely, a Sanders-Warren ticket, a Biden-Sanders ticket or a Sanders-Biden ticket?

One could make an argument that Sanders’s problem is his failure to branch out ideologically, and naming Warren as his VP would not solve that problem.

Yes, Sarah, I think a Sanders-Warren ticket is a possibility. But it’s also key to remember that while Sanders and Warren have a lot in common ideologically, she is also very much an establishment Democrat (she did, after all, endorse Clinton over Sanders in 2016). I could see big figures in the party pushing her to endorse Biden. Of course, there’s no love lost personally between Warren and Biden (goes way back to a bankruptcy bill long before she was a senator) so perhaps she’d rather not fall in with him. It’s a legitimately knotty situation for her, I think.

Maybe a Sanders-Warren ticket is on the horizon? Certainly a lot of upswing for Sanders? Or no?

While the night hasn’t been great for Warren, she did exceed 15 percent in Massachusetts and may also do so in Colorado, Maine, Minnesota and Utah. Plus, we know she at least crossed 15 percent in one congressional district in Virginia. So she’ll get some delegates, too.

We just recorded a podcast and talked about Warren’s role going forward a little. But I’m genuinely curious about how she handles her position in the race now. She’s had an incredibly disappointing night but still has tons of power in the party

We knew going into tonight that both Biden and Sanders tended to do better among voters without a college degree. So did Klobuchar and Buttigieg dropping out help Biden’s numbers among the college-educated? Somewhat, it seems: while he still does a little better among non-college voters in Virginia, North Carolina, Massachusetts and Tennessee, he’s basically even otherwise. Sanders still has more support among those without a college degree, notably in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Minnesota, Massachusetts and Vermont. And Warren does better with college-educated voters across the board.

Fun fact: If you look at the chart to the right over there 👉 … Biden is overperforming his projections in every state except California, Utah and Colorado (basically everywhere except the West).

It looks like Bloomberg might also get a piece of the pie in some states. He’s above 15 percent statewide in Arkansas, California, Colorado, Tennessee, Texas and Utah. But it’s super early in California, and there are still plenty of votes left to count in Colorado, Texas and Utah, so Bloomberg might only clear 15 percent in Arkansas and Tennessee. Or maybe he’ll stay above that mark in most of those states. We’ll see. Biden and Sanders, it should be noted, are above 15 percent in all of those.

Looking ahead to the national convention, the “no majority because three or four candidates are all viable” outcomes are now very unlikely. But “no majority because Sanders and Biden are very close and other candidates get around 10 percent of delegates” is still quite possible.

On the other end of the spectrum, Sanders won 51 percent in his home state of Vermont. In 2016, he won 86 percent there and managed to keep Clinton below 15 percent. But Biden managed to clear the 15 percent threshold there with 22 percent.

Well, if tonight is the beginning of a long delegate battle between Sanders and Biden, then it’s worth taking a look at where candidates may be breaking 15 percent and getting at least a piece of the delegate pie. First up is Alabama, which Biden has won handily with more than 60 percent. But Sanders looks like he broke 15 percent statewide — he’s at 16 percent — so he’s probably also above that mark in some of the congressional districts there as well. So it’s likely not a Biden delegate sweep.

While much has been made of Biden’s late surge, we should note that that’s not true for all groups. Among black voters, aggregate preliminary exit poll data shows that both early deciders and late deciders went overwhelmingly for Biden, with no difference between them. And it’s also interesting that late-deciding Hispanic voters didn’t support Biden at quite the same rate as late-deciding white voters, even though his share about early deciding Hispanic and white voters was the same.

I want to give a lot of kudos to Data for Progress and Swayable for issuing all those post-South Carolina polls overnight. They gave us and the rest of the world some notice about the upside potential for Biden that we otherwise might have missed.

Biden now leads in Texas by a little over 2 points, and The New York Times’s needle gives Biden about a 7 in 10 (72 percent) shot of winning there.

Yes, the Biden and Bloomberg vote shares were highly correlated in Texas — and most everywhere else. So it’s quite possible that Bloomberg holding up to some extent in the Lone Star State could make it harder for Biden to win. But to Nate’s point, a full-on Bloomberg collapse rather than the halfway one — or whatever we’d call it — that we seem to have gotten might have been one too many helpful breaks for Biden to enjoy.

Well I think there’s pretty clear evidence that as Bloomberg has slipped over the past week or two, those votes generally go to Biden. Is that the same as if he hadn’t run in the first place? Probably. But we’re getting into deep counterfactuals now. In rather accidental, screwed-up ways, everything may have worked out perfectly for Biden, even though it’s certainly not how he’d have scripted it.