Biden demolishes Sanders’ comeback chances as Arizona, Florida and Illinois vote

On Tues­day, vot­ing went ahead under the cloud of the rapid­ly wors­en­ing coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic in three states: Ari­zona, Flori­da, and Illi­nois. All three states went over­whelm­ing­ly for for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, push­ing him into a vir­tu­al­ly insur­mount­able lead over his only remain­ing rival, Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders.

If Super Tues­day was a dev­as­tat­ing punch to the Sen­a­tor’s odds of win­ning the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion, the St. Patrick­’s Day “Super Tues­day III” nom­i­nat­ing exer­cise might prove to be the killing blow for his campaign.

As of press time, results in Flori­da were as follows:

2020 Florida Democratic presidential primary

Results in Illi­nois were as follows:

2020 Illinois Democratic presidential primary

And final­ly, results in Ari­zona were as follows:

2020 Arizona Democratic presidential primary

Ohio was also sup­posed to vote today, but opt­ed to post­pone its pri­ma­ry.

So far, Sanders has won an esti­mat­ed 861 del­e­gates to Biden’s 1,147. Giv­en that a can­di­date needs 1,991 del­e­gates to win the nom­i­na­tion, and that over half of the states have already held their pri­maries (includ­ing the three most pop­u­lous), the odds of Sanders catch­ing Biden up have gone from extreme­ly slim to vir­tu­al­ly nil.

For­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Biden, seem­ing to under­stand that the pri­ma­ry race is now enter­ing a new stage, struck a con­cil­ia­to­ry note in a live-streamed speech from his home in Wil­im­ing­ton, Delaware.

Mov­ing from an adver­sar­i­al to a coop­er­a­tive stance, Biden said that Sen­a­tor Sanders and his sup­port­ers brought “a remark­able pas­sion and tenac­i­ty” to the race which had “shift­ed the fun­da­men­tal con­ver­sa­tion in this country.”

Address­ing Sanders’ sup­port­ers direct­ly, he told them, “I hear you, I know what’s at stake, I know what we have to do.”

Sanders spoke before results were announced, but not after.

The three states’ pri­maries might have sig­naled the effec­tive end of the 2020 bat­tle for the par­ty’s pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion, but any relief felt among Democ­rats will be tem­pered by the dev­as­tat­ing impact of the nov­el coronavirus.

Most of Amer­i­ca is hun­ker­ing down to try to weath­er the effects of the glob­al pan­dem­ic – which has now spread to every U.S. state – and in-per­­son vot­ing on Tues­day was at dis­mal­ly low lev­els.

Accord­ing to reports, even elec­tion judges and vol­un­teers were choos­ing not to turn up to polling places, scared by the high risk of infection.

How­ev­er, the turnout rates on Tues­day also offered insight into how upcom­ing pri­maries might be con­duct­ed safe­ly: turnout actu­al­ly increased from 2016 in both Ari­zona and Flori­da, thanks to high rates of ear­ly vot­ing. States such as Ohio that have delayed their pri­maries in the light of the COVID-19 threat should take this les­son into account: invest heav­i­ly in expand­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for vot­ers to cast their bal­lot with­out tak­ing the risk of going to a polling place.