SALT LAKE CITY — Democrats are quickly coalescing around former Vice President Joe Biden, handing him at least four states in Tuesday’s primary, including the biggest delegate prize of Michigan.
Biden extended his delegate lead over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders with wins in Mississippi, Missouri, Michigan and Idaho, while Sanders picked up North Dakota. In Washington the candidates remained deadlocked as ballot were still being counted Wednesday.
Speaking to supporters in Philadelphia, Biden extended an invitation of unity to Sanders’ supporters in anticipation of the former front-runner bowing out of the race.
“I want to thank Bernie Sanders and his supporters for their tireless energy and their passion,” he said. “We share a common goal, and together we’ll defeat Donald Trump.”
Sanders flew home to Vermont late Tuesday and didn’t speak publicly. But on Wednesday he said he looked forward to debating Biden in Arizona this weekend.
Biden also thanked other former candidates who have endorsed him. The latest was Andrew Yang, who endorsed Biden shortly after the new front runner was declared the projected winner in Michigan.
“The math says Joe is our prohibitive nominee. We need to bring the party together,” Yang said on CNN, urging Democrats to unite behind Biden in their objective of defeating President Trump.
As of early Wednesday, Biden leads the nomination race with 823 pledged delegates and Sanders has 663.
Either man needs 1,991 of the 3,979 available delegates to win the party’s nomination. Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard remains in the race with two delegates.
Biden began his resurgence on Feb. 29 in South Carolina and it picked up steam on Super Tuesday last week, when he won 10 of the 14 states and a majority of the pledged delegates, pulling ahead of Sanders, who took home the evening’s grand prize of delegate-rich California.
Biden and Sanders each canceled events in Cleveland at the request of Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, because of concerns over the spread of the coronavirus.
Trump continued to secure nearly every Republican delegate this year during his “Keep America Great” reelection campaign. The president won each Republican primary Tuesday, according to USA Today. Former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, who received his one and only delegate in the Iowa caucuses, remains the sole GOP challenger to the president.
The next round of primaries will be in Ohio, Illinois, Florida and Arizona on March 17.
Here are the storylines from the six states where primaries were held Tuesday.
Idaho
With 20 delegates at stake, Biden won 49% of the vote, while Sanders captured 43%, according to results tracked by The New York Times.
Few of the Democratic candidates visited Idaho and of the last two standing, Sanders is the only one to have spent any advertising money there.
But post-Super Tuesday momentum and the support of more than 30 lawmakers may have worked to Biden’s advantage, according to Politico.
The Democratic primary was semi-closed, meaning only registered Democrats and unaffiliated voters were able to vote, according to Ballotpedia.
Michigan
Biden won Michigan, “Mini-Tuesday’s” top prize, where 125 delegates were at stake.
The victory was a huge win for Biden, not just for the 53 delegates he won, but because of the role Michigan played in 2016.
The typically reliably blue state voted for Trump in the general election that November and a strong win for Biden Tuesday could mean the state is ready to support a Democratic president again, observers said.
Sanders, who won 35 delegates here, had called Michigan the “most important state” of the evening, NPR reported.
Both Sanders and Biden spent more than $1 million in the state, according to Politico.
Mississippi
CNN called the race for Biden minutes after polls closed in a Southern state where he picked up 29 of the 31 pledged delegates. The win continued a sweep of the South for Biden, who has shown strength among black voters. Mississippi is the most heavily African American state in the country, according to The New York Times.
Voter surveys here by AP found they see Biden having the best chance to unseat Trump in November. Biden campaigned as recently as Sunday in the state, while Sanders cancelled an event to spend more time campaigning in Michigan.
In addition to the presidential primaries, voters narrowed the field of candidates running for U.S. Senate and House seats. In the Senate race, former U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy won the Democratic nomination, setting up a rematch with Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, an outspoken ally of Trump, the AP reported.
Missouri
In Missouri, Biden picked up 40 of the 68 delegates at stake, according to The New York Times.
Exit polls Tuesday showed that 69% of African American voters supported the former vice president, a voting base that has supported Biden in the South and helped Clinton beat Sanders in the state in 2016.
Early Tuesday in St. Louis County, Missouri’s largest county, at least 50 of around 400 polling stations had reported problems with the county’s electronic polling books used to check in voters, the AP reported.
A St. Louis polling location was closed after a man backed his vehicle into the building and then started turning over equipment at the station before he was taken into custody by police, according to the AP. Voters were directed to another polling location an hour after the incident.
North Dakota
Sanders’ first win of the night came here, where high turnout delayed results.
He captured 53% of the votes cast in “firehouse” caucuses run by the Democratic Party, as opposed to state election officials managing the process, according to Politico.
North Dakotans could cast their ballot and leave, much like a primary, at 14 caucus locations around the state. There are 14 delegates at stake.
A high turnout meant voters stood in line for as long as an hour in Fargo, prompting party officials to put out a call for volunteers at the largest of North Dakota’s caucus sites.
Washington
Sanders was about 2,000 votes ahead as ballots were still being counted around noon Wednesday. Both candidates had slightly more than 32% of the vote with about 70% of the ballots counted, The New York Times reported.
Washington, the epicenter of one of the nation’s coronavirus outbreaks, told mail-in voters to not lick their ballots, and to instead use water to seal them, Axios reported.
Neither campaign hosted an official watch party over fears of spreading the coronavirus, which had killed 24 people in the state as of Tuesday, The Seattle Times reported.
Over the past year, Sanders has outspent Biden $672,000 to $11,000 here, Politico reports. Sanders won 73% of the vote here in 2016.
Washington has the second-highest delegate count of the evening with 89.
Contributing: Matthew Brown