Joe Biden was expected to do well in South Carolina but nowhere near this well. With 85% of the votes counted Biden has almost 50% of the vote with sanders near 20%.
Tom Steyer dropped out. Bloomberg should too.
Let’s tune into 538 Live Updates for comments.
NATHANIEL RAKICH 9:41 PM: My final takeaway is that this could wind up as an inflection point in the primary calendar. The timing could not have been better for Biden. With Super Tuesday’s massive delegate haul in three days, it would be huge for Biden if there’s a media narrative that he has emerged as the strongest establishment candidate to take on Sanders. You’ve already seen some party elders endorse him tonight. Furthermore, his huge and unexpected margin of victory (it could be 30 points!) bodes very well for him in other Southern states that vote on Super Tuesday.
GEOFFREY SKELLEY 9:38 PM: Biden got the big win he needed, outperforming his polls by quite a bit. And he may have turned this into a two-person race against Sanders, though we’ll see how true that really is on Super Tuesday. It’ll be a very different race that day with so many states voting — including huge states like California and Texas — so we should be careful to not overstate the impact of this South Carolina result. But at this point in the campaign, Biden’s result in the Palmetto State is basically his best-case outcome.
PERRY BACON JR. 9:36 PM: What a huge, massive victory for Biden. It was comparable to the blowouts in South Carolina for Obama in 2008 and Clinton in 2016. It shows how differently black voters are viewing this primary than white ones. I think you will start seeing a real push for non-Biden moderate candidates to get out of the race as well as Biden receiving a lot of endorsements. I think this is a really big night — the Democratic Party might truly mobilize behind Biden and try to push him past Sanders.
NATHANIEL RAKICH 9:35 PM: With his huge margin in South Carolina, Biden has now taken the lead in the nationwide popular vote in the primaries and caucuses so far, according to ABC News’s tally. He has 240,302 votes (26 percent) to Sanders’s 229,461 (25 percent).
PERRY BACON JR. 9:25 PM: I was looking at the returns from some majority-black, rural counties and it looks like Biden really cleaned up in those: Allendale (58 percent of the vote), Hampton (53 percent), Lee (70), Marion (65), Marlboro (62) and Williamsburg (70). That fits with the broader story of tonight (Biden winning the black vote overwhelmingly). The South has some rural black areas where I suspect Biden will be very, very strong.
GEOFFREY SKELLEY 9:24 PM: My back-of-the-envelope delegate math suggests that Biden could get more than 40 of the state’s 54 pledged delegates.
State of the Democratic Race
A week ago Sanders was trading at 67 cents and not too long ago Bloomberg was doing better than Biden.
Sanders is way too high in my estimation.
The odds of a contested convention rose tonight. We will know much more on Super Tuesday, March 3. But I suspect this will give a big boost to Biden in Texas.
Florida Primary
As it stands now, Sanders would get few if any Florida delegates. But the big problem is for everyone but Sanders is California.
California Primary
If those results held, only Sanders and Warren would win delegates in California.
However, I expect Biden will get a boost in Texas, California, and the other Super Tuesday states after this blowout win.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
California has early voting. Just think of all the people who voted before the South Carolina primary.
According to the local paper, that number is about 10% currently.
Buttigieg dropping out will definitely help Biden. I wonder if Biden promised him a VP slot if he dropped out.
Sounds like wishful thinking to me.
February 28, 2020
“The Public Doesn’t Really Decide The Nominee”: Leaders Move To Limit Democratic Choice in The Democratic Convention
“The Public Doesn’t Really Decide The Nominee”
Yes, the Democratic Party hates democracy. Funny how they want to end the electoral college while supporting a nomination system that doesn’t count every vote.
Looks like Bloomberg will have to add Biden (and the DNC) to his list of “People who have annoyed me and f**ed me over during the past 74 years”.
Trump will have a field day running against Biden, if this demented, delusional grifter actually gets the nomination.
Lizzy needs to drop out. She can’t even win a totem poll.
If Warren drops out, Sanders will crush the rest.
He still looks to get less than half of the delegates. At least unless some of the holdouts are supporting a “moderate” solely for tactical reasons, and will get with the (Sanders) program if victory starts looking genuinely possible.
A 40%+ Sanders delegate share going into the convention, only to have the nomination go to Biden on account of the other gang of 15%’ers ganging up on him, would be Trump’s favorite outcome. Along with a >40%+, but <50% Sanders delegate share going into the convention, with the nomination given to him….. It’s just hard to take on an incumbent President, period, when the opposition is split that hard down the middle.
In the mail box Saturday we got three different campaign flyers from the Mike Bloomberg campaign, for a total of five pieces since the beginning of the week. Each flyer was different and each explained how Mike was the man to vote for.
The only question is how big the blue wave from 2018 will be in 2020. Trump is in real trouble if there is a global recession.
You might be right, but even though the downturn began before the coronavirus outbreak, it provides a perfect excuse for a poor economy by this summer. For example, supply-chain issues that lead to layoffs, trade slowdown, consumer shortages, etc.
Had Trump taken the approach that coronavirus will be impossible to contain, he could have blamed the resulting recession on things beyond his control. Instead he claimed we are ready, and that it is contained. Since Trump has it controlled, and it’s not a serious threat, any recession is his fault, not the fault of the coronavirus. He was dealt a hand that couldn’t lose, a perfect excuse for anything that might happen, but he elected to discard his winning hand, and now is hoping he can find some new cards.
I’m not sure that it all falls on Trump — that would be an odd thing. I think that there will be many competing voices in the public forum, e.g. business and employment problems due to China or the coronavirus, expanding public quarantines across the country, people distracted with fear or apprehension, etc., Democratic infighting, and so forth. Trump will just be one of many inputs seeking an audience. I think that it is more complex than what you presented.
Worth noting that both Biden and Sanders, should they be elected, would be OLDER than Ronald Reagan when he LEFT the White House.
Sanders will be 79 in September and Biden 78 in November. Biden clearly is becoming senile and Sanders had a heart attack this year
The Democrats won’t be electing a president so much as picking a vice president in Milwaukee. OTOH Trump will be 4 years younger than either Biden or Sanders are today at the end of his putative 2nd term!
Which candidates of both parties will survive coronavirus?
Buttigieg and his Mom (Klobuchar) just might…..
Biden will be crushed on Tuesday. He is clearly sundowning and his family corruption has caught up with him. He has no political operation beyond SC, no ground game whatsoever and almost no cash on hand.
Bernie is not even a democratic socialist, he’s really just a standard FDR democrat. None of his proposals are particularly radical and so far the majority of Democrat voters in every state have polled in favor of Medicare for All.
Uh, wait, from what I understand, “sundowning” is a trendy term to indicate what old Boomers like me used to call “being out to pasture”? So Bernie, who suffered a mild heart attack and who is old enough to be a great-grandfather compared to dried up, grandfatherly but still barely in the game Biden, is more virile in your opinion? ROTFL. Sad. I would vote for Biden over Trump but not, much as I despise Trump, for Bernie.
The Biden campaign says they got $5 million in contributions in the 24 hours after the win. There is a lot of Wall Street money looking for a way to keep Bernie out.
Wait till Biden wakes up on November 4th and finds out he won the Senate vote in South Carolina.
Biden is the great white hope for SC’s black folk?
Oh joy, the idiot that claims 150 million Americans have died from gun violence.
Wow! That was surprisingly big!
Now Bloomberg will be accused of “stealing” the nomination from Biden, if Sanders wins…..
Even in Sanders heavy Cali, and more so in more moderate states in the rest of the country, this will help increase black turnout. Certainly not the outcome Trump was hoping for.
Biden will increase Black turnout, but people under 40 years old will not show up to vote for him. Would the women who showed up to vote for Hilary come out in the same numbers for Biden? I doubt it.
Don’t underestimate the ability of Sanders voters to “solidarity vote” with black voters, against Trump… Being a very clear favorite among black, or “minority” in general, voters; does lend credibility/”street cred” to a candidate; among at least pockets of Sanders’ coalition.
Well, all Joe has to do now is convince 340 billion of us that he isn’t daft. I keep getting this image of a five year old in a crowded room with a verbal assault rifle…with the safety off.
You could use a math lesson.
Oh damn! I’m off by a factor of 1,000. Next thing you know, I’ll be saying 150 million people have been killed by guns since…nevermind.
Nicely played Abend!
Ha ha ha. So much crowing from the ABB (Anybody But Bernie) crowd! Don’t count your chickens before they hatch. Let’s see what Super Tuesday brings.
not counting any chickens but independents don’t vote for socialists. anyone rooting against trump with their head screwed on straight should not be rooting for bernie
Independent here, and fully concur with Mish on this one.
Will not vote for Trump, Sanders, or Warren in the next election. Last time it was Trump, Hillary, or Sanders, so I voted for Gary Johnson. Others I know just didn’t even vote in the last election.
I also voted for Johnson. The last Republican I voted for was Nixon, and I despise Trump. Nevertheless, I’d consider voting for him if the nominee is Sanders. At least Trump is entertaining, and the end doesn’t accomplish anything (which is good).
I guess your Bloomberg bet looks to be dead. Are you going to pick up Biden? [lol]