LOS ANGELES — Don’t call it a comeback.
Less than a week after being left for dead in the Democratic race, Joe Biden is winning a number of key Super Tuesday states by blowout margins, performing far better across the board than even his own campaign could have hoped for heading into the race’s most consequential election night.
As of 9 p.m. EST, Biden had won Alabama, Virginia and North Carolina by blowout margins, while performing well enough in Bernie Sanders’ home state of Vermont that it looked like he’d win some delegates there — a major surprise. He was competitive in Massachusetts, a polls had shown was a two-way race between Warren and Sanders just days ago. And with Michael Bloomberg’s support collapsing across the map and Sanders seeing his numbers in state after state slip from his 2016 performances, early results pointed to a big night for Biden that could upend the race and crown him the new frontrunner for the nomination.
There are plenty of states still voting — including California, the massive state Bernie Sanders is banking on to be his firewall — and the night is far from over. But right now, it’s looking like a Biden blowout.
That’s a remarkable reversal for a candidate left for dead after dismal showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first states to vote, and a distant second-place finish in Nevada. Biden’s comeback has been built on his dominant strength with southern black voters, which propelled him to a huge win in South Carolina last Saturday that’s slingshotted him into the biggest night of his half-century political career. That win helped push Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar out of the race and into his camp — both endorsed Biden on Monday, part of a huge outpouring of establishment Democratic support in recent days.
Biden’s rise came at the expense of Michael Bloomberg, whose disastrous debate performance two weeks ago in Nevada took poll numbers that had been gradually ticking up based on his profligate ad spending and forced them into a plateau, then a nosedive after Biden’s bounceback. Bloomberg won just 10% of the vote in Virginia, a state that should have been a strong one for him, far short of the 15% threshold he needed to win statewide delegates.
A source close to Michael Bloomberg’s campaign told VICE News Tuesday evening that the main rationale for Bloomberg’s campaign — that he was the only candidate who could block Sanders from the nomination — was blown apart when Biden won South Carolina by such a convincing margin.
"At least I got a bunch of free sandwiches out of it,” joked the source.
Cover: Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden buys a pie at Buttercup Diner in Oakland, California on March 3, 2020. (Photo by JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images)
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