Why The Political Environment Is Outweighing Candidate Strength For Now
Setting aside Trumps endorsements of secure incumbents who arent facing credible primary challengers clearly designed to pad the former presidents win-loss record one other notable contest is the GOP primary to face Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright in Northeast Pennsylvania. Trump has endorsed Jim Bognet, a former official in his administration who lost to Cartwright in 2020. Bognet is facing Mike Marsicano, who finished fourth in the primary two years ago but has slightly outspent Bognet this time around.
Trump Lobs Insults At Biden And Other Democratic Presidential Candidates
“The results only increase the likelihood that no candidate will have enough delegates for a first ballot victory at their convention, which only means more chaos!” Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement.
As the results rolled in Tuesday night, Trump mocked former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s underwhelming performance.
“$700 million washed down the drain, and he got nothing for it but the nickname Mini Mike, and the complete destruction of his reputation,” Trump tweeted of Bloomberg.
Trump also noted the poor performance of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who at one point seemed to be the party favorite but didn’t even win her home state, Massachusetts.
“Elizabeth ‘Pocahontas’ Warren, other than Mini Mike, was the loser of the night. She didn’t even come close to winning her home state of Massachusetts,” Trump tweeted. “Well, now she can just sit back with her husband and have a nice cold beer!”
He spent less time early in the night on the pair of candidates he’s most likely to face in the fall.
Trump’s advisers never assumed Biden was a lock for the nomination, but they have acknowledged that on paper he has consistently posed one of the biggest potential threats to the president’s re-election, leading Trump in numerous head-to-head polls in key swing states and by an average of 5.4 percentage points nationally, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average.
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Nbc News Exit Poll: Biden Wins Democratic Primary In Massachusetts Warren’s Home Turf
NBC News Exit Poll Desk
Joe Biden beat Elizabeth Warren on her home turf of Massachusetts in Tuesday’s Democratic primary. Biden captured the lion’s share of support from late-deciding voters. Roughly 4 in 10 voters who made up their minds in the last few days broke for Biden, according to NBC News Exit Poll results.
Biden does well with voters in the state who are looking for a candidate who can unite the country, and he wins nearly half of moderate or conservative voters there, as well as those ages 65 and older.
Biden also won strong support from voters who consider health care the top issue. But in contrast to Bernie Sanders’ voters, a majority of those who voted for Biden in the Massachusetts primary oppose a single-payer plan.
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Nbc News Exit Poll: Late
NBC News Exit Poll Desk
Joe Biden is garnering nearly half the support of Democrats who picked a candidate in just the last few days before Super Tuesday, according to early results from the NBC News Exit Poll conducted in 12 of the 14 Super Tuesday states.
Riding a wave of endorsements from former rivals and his landslide victory in Saturdays South Carolina primary, Biden was favored by 47 percent of Super Tuesday voters who said they picked a candidate in the last few days. He left Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Mike Bloomberg far behind with these late-deciding voters.
Late-deciding voters made up more than a quarter of the Super Tuesday electorate, exit poll results show.
Sanders Wins Vermont Biden Wins Virginia
Sen. Bernie Sanders has won his home state of Vermont and former Vice President Joe Biden has won Virgini. Those announcements were made from exit polling as voting on those contests closed.
During his 2016 run, Sanders won the state by a wide margin 86% to Hillary Clintons 13% and took all of the states delegates.
The state carries a total of 16 delegates and is one of 14 states up for grabs tonight.
Earlier Tuesday, Sanders cast his ballot in Burlington, Vt.
Its very nice to be back, I can tell you that, the Vermont independent told a poll worker.
To beat Donald Trump, we are going to need to have the largest voter turnout in the history of this country, Sanders told reporters. We need energy. We need excitement. I think our campaign is that campaign.
A Biden watch party in Alexandria, Virginia, erupted in cheers as the news came across the screen on CNN.
Biden was in Los Angeles, Calif, at the time and celebrated his early win with supporters there.
It feels good. I think were going to do well in some other states.
Recent polling had indicated Biden had an edge over his competitors, but Bloomberg poured thousands of dollars into campaigning there.
Virginia experienced its own blue wave last November when Democrats won control of both houses of the states General Assembly for the first time since 1993. A Republican hasnt won a statewide race here for more than 10 years.
Christal Hayes, Ryan Miller, John Fritze
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Tennessee Extends Voting In Several Locations After Tornado Damage
A Davidson County judge Tuesday afternoon ruled that Tennessee polls can remain open until 8 p.m. CT at all sites across Nashville.
Polls were originally set to close at 8 p.m. ET. Five polling sites will remain open until 11 p.m. ET.
The ruling came at the request of four of the top Democratic presidential campaigns, along with the Tennessee Democratic Party. The groups filed suit in a Nashville court on Tuesday to extend poll times amid heavy tornado damage throughout the city. A voting-rights group had also urged Tennessee to extend Tuesdays primary voting in areas damaged by tornadoes.
Tornadoes killed at least 22 people and shredded at least 140 buildings amid violent storms ranging from Texas to North Carolina. A tornado cut a swatch of destruction through Nashville.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee declared a state of emergency. President Donald Trump said he would visit the region Friday to review damage from the very vicious tornadoes.
Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, part of a consortium monitoring election security on Tuesday, urged Lee, Secretary of State Tre Hargett and elections coordinator Mark Goins to extend the period for voting.
It is critical that all voters be provided a fair and full opportunity to vote, Clarke said. That is not possible for people in those parts of Tennessee that have been devastated by the tornado.
Bart Jansen, USA TODAY, and Adam Tamburin and Natalie Allison, Nashville Tennessean
Could Coronavirus Convince Republicans To Back Public Healthcare
Healthcare has been a major or even the main issue for voters in the primaries so far and is sure to factor into many Super Tuesday voters decisions today. Amid the coronavirus outbreak, even Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill are advocating for the sort of public healthcare that all the Democratic presidential candidates are proposing .
Representative Ted Yoho, a Republican of Florida who has opposed the Affordable Care Act, nevertheless advocated for free coronavirus testing and treatment for uninsured Americans, according to HuffPosts Matt Fuller. You can look at it as socialized medicine, but in the face of an outbreak, a pandemic, whats your options? Yoho said.
Lawmakers who skew older, tend to travel a lot seem to be especially wary of contracting the disease. BuzzFeed News Paul McLeod reports that Bill Cassidy, a Republican senator from Louisiana, was generous with his hand sanitizer.
Mid-scrum on coronavirus Senator Bill Cassidy says that as a gastroenterologist he already washes his hands like Lady MacBeth, then pulls out hand sanitizer and pours some into the hand if every reporter around him.
Stoneys comments come just days after the South Carolina Democratic primary which Biden won by double digits. Since then Biden has enjoyed a wave of endorsements, including from two moderate rivals in the primary, Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar and former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg, who dropped out and backed him.
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What Is Super Tuesday And How Does It Work
BBC News
Voters across America are preparing to take part in the biggest day of the 2020 election so far.
More than a year after the first Democratic candidates joined the race to take on Donald Trump, we’ve now reached Super Tuesday.
Fourteen states will vote on which Democrat they want to run in November’s election. Bernie Sanders is in the lead after the early contests.
Bloomberg’s Exit Means He Won’t Have To Disclose His Personal Fortune
From CNN’s Fredreka Schouten
Michael Bloombergs decision today to drop out of the race also means the former New York mayor wont have to make public details about his vast media and financial-data fortune.
The former New York City mayor was due to file his first personal financial disclosure report with federal election regulators on March 20, after seeking and receiving two extensions on the filing deadline.
Now that hes dropped out, the requirement for public disclosure also goes away.
Forbes pegs at Bloombergs net worth at $60 billion.
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The Latino Vote: The Sleeping Giant Awakens
Long overlooked, Latino Democrats in California, Texas and around the country are invested in picking someone who can beat President Trump. And they could decide the 2020 race.
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LOS ANGELES Latino voters are poised to pick the Democratic nominee.
Long overlooked by the political establishment and dismissed as a sleeping giant of a demographic that didnt vote as reliably as it could, millions of Latinos are expected to go to the polls on Tuesday in key states like Colorado, Virginia, North Carolina and, most significantly, in Texas and California.
One analysis estimates that roughly one-third of the 643 delegates up for grabs in those two states will be determined by Latino voters.
Latinos are expected to make up the largest nonwhite ethnic voting bloc in 2020. Around the country, Latino Democrats are seeking the candidate who is best poised to take on President Trump, who many believe has placed a target on their own backs with his anti-immigrant rhetoric. These voters, far from a monolith but united on some key issues, will cast their ballots in Texas exactly seven months after the deadliest anti-Latino attack in modern American history took place in El Paso.
Now, he said, is the time Latino groups are pressing to get more promises from candidates on what they will do on health care, education and immigration.
Georgias June 9 Primary
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More Republicans than Democrats have requested absentee ballots.
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Stacy Abrams launched an initiative to track mail voting problems during the primary.
- The relocation of more than 10% of polling places because of the pandemic plus poll closures statewide due to a lack of federal oversight could lead to lines and crowding during the primary.
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Bloomberg Campaign Will ‘take Another Look’ After Super Tuesday Results
Publicly, the Bloomberg campaign is projecting confidence tonight, with campaign manager Kevin Sheekey MSNBC last hour that they are “absolutely not” worried about Bloomberg being a spoiler and that their internal polling shows Bloomberg being viable in most, if not all, the states at play tonight.
But privately, Bloomberg campaign officials are far less optimistic. They are acknowledging that Biden is poised to do extremely well tonight and say their data shows that a large number of voters made up their minds last-minute, which almost surely helps Biden.
Bloomberg officials are acknowledging that Bloomberg will re-assess on Wednesday after the data is in whether to stay in the race. Although they are casting that as par for the course for any candidate after his first contest on the ballot, this is a changefrom what Bloomberg had said as recently as the weekend: That he planned to say in even if he didnt place in the top three on Super Tuesday.
Just a few hours ago in Miami, Bloomberg was defiant, saying Biden is taking votes away from him and that hes “in it to win it,” even if that means a contested convention.
Nbc News Exit Poll: 1 In 7 Super Tuesday Voters Wont Pledge To Support The Democratic Nominee
NBC News Exit Poll Desk
Fourteen percent of those voting in Democratic primaries across the country Tuesday arent committing to voting for the partys nominee in November, according to the NBC News Exit Poll conducted in 12 of the 14 Super Tuesday states. Thats about 1 in 7 voters.
As they left the polls, voters were asked if they planned to vote for the Democratic nominee this fall regardless of who it is. Supporters of Mike Bloomberg were least likely to pledge to vote Democratic in November: 18 percent of his voters wouldn’t commit to the partys ticket.
The most loyal Democratic voters? Supporters of Elizabeth Warren. Ninety-one percent of her voters said theyd support the partys nominee regardless of who it is.
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Nbc News Exit Poll: First
NBC News Exit Poll Desk
Bernie Sanders is the clear favorite of those voting in their first Democratic presidential primary on Tuesday, according to results from the NBC News Exit Poll conducted in nine of the 14 Super Tuesday states. But new voters represent a relatively slim share of Tuesdays electorate.
Sanders received support from 43 percent of first-time voters, leaving Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Mike Bloomberg far behind.
But these new voters make up just 13 percent of those voting in Democratic primaries Tuesday. That’s much lower than the share of first-time participants in last months Iowa and Nevada caucuses, but roughly on par with the percentages of new voters in the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries.
Among those whove voted in a Democratic primary before, Biden has a slim lead over Sanders.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. At his Super Tuesday event, Bloomberg said that “no matter how many delegates we win tonight, we’ve done something no one else thought was possible.”
“In three months, we went from 1 percent to being a contender for the Democratic nomination,” he continued.
So far, the early returns on Tuesday did not appear as good for Bloomberg as he had hoped. Bloomberg bypassed the first four states, first appearing on ballots Tuesday.
“We proved we can win the voters who will decide the general election,” Bloomberg said in his speech.
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But Sanders, after a clean win in New Hampshire, a decisive victory in Nevada, and second-place finishes in Iowa and South Carolina gave him the delegate advantage, is aiming to amass an even wider delegate lead to make the case that he is the one to take on Trump in November.
“This I believe from the bottom of my heart or I would not be here today or I would not have gotten into this race, I believe that if you want to defeat Donald Trump — and all Democrats do, most independents do, some Republicans do — if you want to beat Donald Trump, our campaign is the strongest campaign to defeat Trump,” he said in Salt Lake City on Monday.
California and Texas have 415 and 228 pledged delegates, respectively, making both states top targets across the board — and in recent polling, it is Sanders who is leading the field in both.
And the liberal stalwart is banking on the Golden State for not only a win, but a dominant victory, hoping to emerge from Tuesday with such a wide margin over the field that his campaign has an insurmountable path to the nomination.
“Now, let me tell you why we are going to win the Democratic nomination,” Sanders told a crowd of more than 15,000 in Los Angeles Sunday night. “Why we’re going to win here in California and why we are going to defeat, and defeat badly, Donald Trump, we are going to win because we have the strongest grassroots movement, multi-racial, multi-generational in the history of this country.”
And he remains confident of his chances.
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Usc Experts Examine The Unique Aspects Of Todays Vote Including The Fact That For Once California Matters
Voters in 14 states will cast votes for presidential candidates on March 3, also known as Super Tuesday. With President Donald Trump all but guaranteed the Republican party nomination, the outcome of Super Tuesday is critical to determining which of the remaining Democratic candidates will face the president in the November general election. More than a third of all delegates for the Democratic National Convention will be allotted in primary contests in states including Texas, Virginia, Massachusetts and Super Tuesday newcomer California.
Now is when things get serious in the presidential race.
Christina Bellantoni
The days leading up to Super Tuesday have been full of twists and turns. Soon after announcing they were suspending their campaigns, former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar promptly threw their support to former Vice President Joe Biden. Biden received those endorsements while basking in the glow of his recent landslide victory in the South Carolina primary, a much-needed resurgence after lagging behind Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.
Now is when things get serious in the presidential race, said Christina Bellantoni, director of the Annenberg Media Center and a professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, which will host a Super Tuesday viewing party complete with an expert panel to analyze the returns.
