Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility
Super Tuesday Tally: Biden Wins 4 States, Sanders Takes 2
gvw_ap_news
By Associated Press
Published 5 years ago on
March 4, 2020

Share

Joe Biden scored a series of Super Tuesday victories in key Southern states, building on momentum that has swiftly revived his Democratic presidential campaign in recent days. Bernie Sanders countered with wins in his home state of Vermont and in Colorado, as the race began to shift west, where some polls were starting to close.
Biden took Alabama, Oklahoma and the battleground states of North Carolina and Virginia, a strong start as 14 states went to the polls across the nation. Still, voting was ongoing in the two top prizes, Texas and California — meaning the night’s biggest winner remained unclear.

Biden Performing Well with African Americans

The wins in heavily African American states complemented the former vice president’s victory in last weekend’s South Carolina primary. Virginia was especially key because Sanders, a Vermont senator, and billionaire former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg heavily contested it over the past week.
A once-jumbled race arrived at the most pivotal night of the primary as an increasingly well-defined battle between leftist Democrats who back the likes of Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and centrists preferring Biden. A wild card was Bloomberg, who skipped the primary’s first four states but poured more than $500 million of his personal fortune into TV advertising in Super Tuesday states and faced increasing pressure to prove it was all worth it.
Some good news for the former mayor came in the U.S. territory of American Samoa, where he took five of its six delegates. The final one went to U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii.

Bloomberg Looking Beyond Primaries

Bloomberg was already looking beyond the primary to the November election against Trump, who racked up easy victories in lightly contested Republican primaries across the country.
“We have the resources to beat Trump in swing states that Democrats lost in 2016,” he said Tuesday night while campaigning in Florida.
Two other moderates, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, both left the race in the run-up to Super Tuesday, then endorsed Biden on Monday. That helped unify moderates behind the former vice president, whose campaign risked collapsing until his resounding win in South Carolina.
Biden’s continued turnaround would be all the more surprising because Super Tuesday was supposed to be about monster fundraising and strong political organization across such a large swath of the country. Biden largely had neither and yet still looked poised for a strong night. Sanders, an avowed democratic socialist, argued that the party’s elders were scrambling to block him from a nomination it appeared just last week he could run away with.
“The political establishment has made their choice: Anybody but Bernie Sanders,” Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir wrote in a fundraising message Tuesday.
“The truth is, we’ve always known we were taking on the entire damn 1 percent of this country,” Shakir added. “But we have something they do not have: people. Lots and lots of people.”

Sanders Experiencing Deja Vu

For Sanders, Super Tuesday 2020 was beginning to look a bit like the 2016 campaign, when Hillary Clinton racked up delegates from Southern states as the Vermont senator struggled to connect with black voters. During his second campaign, Sanders has made a concerted effort to improve his standing with minorities nationwide, and his campaign remains optimistic about heavily Hispanic California, where he’s predicted victory.
But in a sign of his challenges, AP VoteCast, a survey of the electorate, showed Biden continuing to demonstrate strength with black voters in Virginia, North Carolina and Alabama. In Alabama, where black voters made up more than half the Democratic electorate on Tuesday, Biden won 60% of black voters, while Bloomberg won about 25%. Sanders won about 10%.
Virginia is a traditional swing state that has moved more reliably Democratic in recent years, especially as people living in densely populated communities outside Washington turned their back on President Donald Trump, as many suburban voters have around the country. North Carolina is a key potential swing state that backed President Barack Obama in 2008 and that Democrats are hoping to take back from Trump in November.

Biden Looking for More Southern State Wins

Biden was looking for more Southern wins in Arkansas and Tennessee. His campaign was also bullish on Oklahoma.
Some polls in Tennessee, though, were ordered to extend voting hours in the wake of a tornado hitting the state. The Tennessee Democratic Party and the presidential campaigns of Biden, Sanders Bloomberg and Warren successfully sued Davidson County election officials and the secretary of state’s office to extend voting for three hours beyond their scheduled 7 p.m. local time close.
Sanders, who had already won New Hampshire and Nevada and secured a virtual first-place tie in Iowa, is the favorite in Maine, and he could end up stealing Warren’s home state of Massachusetts. Early returns there showed a tight, three-way race with Biden, Sanders and Warren.
Sanders also could have a strong showing in Minnesota, especially with Klobuchar now out of the race. And he visited Utah scrounging for final votes on Monday.
Warren’s campaign hasn’t predicted outright victory anywhere on Tuesday, but is hoping to pick up delegates in places like California. Her top advisers have predicted that no candidate may get to the convention with enough delegates to secure the nomination — potentially positioning Warren for the role of kingmaker.
A one-time front-runner, Warren will increasingly face pressure to drop out of the race if she doesn’t win her home state. But, during a rally in Detroit, Warren vowed to soldier on.
“My name is Elizabeth Warren, and I’m the woman who’s going to beat Donald Trump,” she said. “Prediction has been a terrible business, and the pundits have gotten it wrong over and over.”
Texas and California account for 643 delegates between them — or about a third of the nearly 2,000 needed to clinch the nomination. In all, Super Tuesday offered 1,344 new delegates, or around 34% of all the total up for grabs nationwide.

DON'T MISS

What Are Fresno Real Estate Experts Predicting for 2025 and Beyond?

DON'T MISS

First California EV Mandates Hit Automakers This Year. Most Are Not Even Close

DON'T MISS

California Democrats Backed Into a Corner Over Teen Sex Solicitation

DON'T MISS

Fresno Unified’s New Supe Makes 500% More Than a New Teacher

DON'T MISS

Trump Says Harvard University’s Tax-Exempt Status Will Be Revoked

DON'T MISS

Los Angeles Residents Begin to Rebuild After Devastating Fires

DON'T MISS

Trump’s Budget Includes $3.2 Billion for World Bank’s Fund for Poorest Countries

DON'T MISS

Illinois Man Sentenced to 53 Years for Hate Crime That Killed Palestinian Child

DON'T MISS

Clovis Police Still Searching for Suspect in McDonald’s Killing of Caleb Quick

DON'T MISS

Trump Requests $893 Billion for National Defense, Flat Versus 2025

DON'T MISS

Tulare County Resident Fights Off Suspected Home Invader

DON'T MISS

CDC Reports 216 Child Deaths This Flu Season, the Most in 15 Years

UP NEXT

Trump Taps Waltz for US Ambassador to the United Nations

UP NEXT

Brazilian Nun Who Was the World’s Oldest Person Has Died at 116

UP NEXT

EPA Research in Limbo as Scientists Brace for Massive Job Cuts

UP NEXT

UNC’s Belichick Defends Hudson as ‘Doing Her Job’ After Interjecting During CBS Interview

UP NEXT

Teoscar Hernandez, Andy Pages Lead 18-Hit Attack as Dodgers Beat Marlins

UP NEXT

Kamala Harris Plans a Speech Sharply Criticizing Donald Trump’s Policies

UP NEXT

‘Agreeing to Disagree’ Is Hurting Your Relationships – Here’s What to Do Instead

UP NEXT

Take It Down Act Passes, Targets Deepfakes and Revenge Porn

UP NEXT

Edman Delivers in 10th as Dodgers Weather Myers’ Pinch-Hit Slam for Win Over Marlins

UP NEXT

Supply and Demand: Less Food Means Higher Prices – or Does It?

Los Angeles Residents Begin to Rebuild After Devastating Fires

15 minutes ago

Trump’s Budget Includes $3.2 Billion for World Bank’s Fund for Poorest Countries

41 minutes ago

Illinois Man Sentenced to 53 Years for Hate Crime That Killed Palestinian Child

43 minutes ago

Clovis Police Still Searching for Suspect in McDonald’s Killing of Caleb Quick

2 hours ago

Trump Requests $893 Billion for National Defense, Flat Versus 2025

3 hours ago

Tulare County Resident Fights Off Suspected Home Invader

3 hours ago

CDC Reports 216 Child Deaths This Flu Season, the Most in 15 Years

3 hours ago

Gaza Tensions Flare Over Dwindling Supplies as Blockade Persists, Aid Worker Says

3 hours ago

Trump Signs Executive Order to End Federal Funding for NPR and PBS

4 hours ago

Israeli Forces to Demolish More Than 100 Homes in Israeli-Occupied West Bank

4 hours ago

California Democrats Backed Into a Corner Over Teen Sex Solicitation

Jeanne Kuang CalMatters By Jeanne Kuang, CalMatters This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters. Califo...

3 minutes ago

Assemblymembers watch the results of a vote during an Assembly floor session at the state Capitol in Sacramento on March 13, 2025. Photo by Fred Greaves for CalMatters
3 minutes ago

California Democrats Backed Into a Corner Over Teen Sex Solicitation

9 minutes ago

Fresno Unified’s New Supe Makes 500% More Than a New Teacher

A general view of the Harvard Medical School in the Longwood Medical Area in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., May 15, 2022. (REUTERS File)
12 minutes ago

Trump Says Harvard University’s Tax-Exempt Status Will Be Revoked

A worker stands atop a home being rebuilt after the Palisades Fire in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, Thursday, April 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
15 minutes ago

Los Angeles Residents Begin to Rebuild After Devastating Fires

Vehicles pass in front of the World Bank building, which houses the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, in Washington, D.C. on May 20, 2022. Picture taken with a long exposure. Picture taken May 20, 2022. (REUTERS/Raphael Satter/File Photo)
41 minutes ago

Trump’s Budget Includes $3.2 Billion for World Bank’s Fund for Poorest Countries

Joseph M. Czuba poses for a police booking photograph after being arrested by the Will County Sheriff's Office in Illinois, U.S., in this handout picture obtained by Reuters on October 15, 2023. Will County Sheriff/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
43 minutes ago

Illinois Man Sentenced to 53 Years for Hate Crime That Killed Palestinian Child

2 hours ago

Clovis Police Still Searching for Suspect in McDonald’s Killing of Caleb Quick

President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 30, 2025. (REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File Photo)
3 hours ago

Trump Requests $893 Billion for National Defense, Flat Versus 2025

Help continue the work that gets you the news that matters most.

Search

Send this to a friend