Joe Biden overtakes Bernie Sanders, is now winning Washington’s presidential primary

For­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden has edged ahead of Bernie Sanders in Wash­ing­ton State’s 2020 pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry and is now the plu­ral­i­ty vote get­ter, new results tab­u­lat­ed by coun­ty elec­tions offi­cials show.

As of this evening (March 11th) Biden had moved past Sanders to claim around 34.79% of the vote, up from 32.51% last night.

In last night’s ear­ly returns, Sanders led by Biden by 2,084 votes.

Now, Biden leads Sanders by 14,938 votes statewide.

Biden also cap­tured a plu­ral­i­ty of the vote in King Coun­ty and Jef­fer­son Coun­ty, where Sanders had been ahead, though Sanders over­took him in Spokane County.

If the cur­rent trend con­tin­ues, Biden will win Wash­ing­ton State, secur­ing a plu­ral­i­ty of the vote in a sixth state that Sanders won in 2016. (Biden has already tak­en Min­neso­ta, Okla­homa, Maine, Michi­gan, and Ida­ho out of Sanders’ column).

Many observers had expect­ed Sanders to win Wash­ing­ton State and may find Biden’s per­for­mance sur­pris­ing. It’s worth not­ing that the ear­li­est poll of the pri­ma­ry elec­torate we know of, from Zog­by’s firm, found Biden with a one point edge over Sanders. That poll was tak­en last sum­mer, an eon ago in politics.

Since then, Biden’s cam­paign has waned and roared back to life. A poll back in Jan­u­ary by Sur­veyUSA put Sanders ahead in the pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry; a more recent poll tak­en last week found Sanders and Biden tied.

The momen­tum is clear­ly all on Joe Biden’s side right now, and Sanders’ path to the nom­i­na­tion is dis­ap­pear­ing extreme­ly rapidly.

After choos­ing not to offer an ini­tial com­ment on last night’s results, Sanders appeared at a news con­fer­ence today in Burling­ton to declare that he would remain in the race and was look­ing for­ward to debat­ing Joe Biden one-on-one this Sun­day in Ari­zona. The two men will face off with no audi­ence due to coro­n­avirus con­cerns, which will make the dynam­ic between them very different.

Sanders acknowl­edged his cam­paign isn’t get­ting the results it had hoped for, and hint­ed that he might exit the race pri­or to the 2020 DNC in Milwaukee.

As The New York Times put it:

“There was no defi­ant bat­tle cry on Wednes­day, no vow to fight Mr. Biden all the way to the Mil­wau­kee con­ven­tion in July, no alle­ga­tion of elec­tion-rig­ging or insin­u­a­tion of an estab­lish­ment con­spir­a­cy like he mem­o­rably made in 2016.”

For his part, Biden has tried to be mag­nan­i­mous in vic­to­ry, rec­og­niz­ing that he will need the sup­port of the move­ment that is back­ing Bernie for the pres­i­den­cy to suc­cess­ful­ly take out Don­ald Trump, the most cor­rupt pres­i­dent in history.

“I want to thank Bernie Sanders and his sup­port­ers for their tire­less ener­gy and their pas­sion,” Biden said in his vic­to­ry speech to sup­port­ers in Philadel­phia. “We share a com­mon goal, and togeth­er we can defeat Don­ald Trump.”