No surprise: Joe Biden projected to win Mississippi Democratic primary

Joe Biden appears set to con­tin­ue his win­ning streak in the South.

Just after 5 PM Pacific/8 PM East­ern, news net­works (includ­ing CNN and NBC News) pro­ject­ed that Biden would win the Mis­sis­sip­pi Demo­c­ra­t­ic primary.

Mis­souri and North Dako­ta, mean­while, were clas­si­fied as Too Ear­ly To Call.

“This Pres­i­den­tial Pri­ma­ry coin­cides with a state/local pri­ma­ry,” the Green Papers notes. “These coin­cid­ing pri­maries tend to have an impact upon vot­er turnout.”

“Par­tic­i­pa­tion in Mis­sis­sip­pi’s del­e­gate selec­tion process is open to only qual­i­fied elec­tors who sup­port the prin­ci­ples and val­ues estab­lished and set forth by the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty plat­form. Because par­ty reg­is­tra­tion is not allowed in Mis­sis­sip­pi, qual­i­fied elec­tors must acknowl­edge that they are Democ­rats through sig­na­ture, begin­ning at the precinct lev­el caucuses.”

“Thir­ty-six of forty-one del­e­gates to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion are allo­cat­ed to pres­i­den­tial con­tenders based on the results of the vot­ing in today’s Mis­sis­sip­pi Pres­i­den­tial Pri­ma­ry. A manda­to­ry fif­teen per­cent thresh­old is required in order for a pres­i­den­tial con­tender to be allo­cat­ed Nation­al Con­ven­tion del­e­gates at either the con­gres­sion­al dis­trict or statewide level.”

Most par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Mis­sis­sip­pi Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry was by vot­ers par­tic­i­pat­ing in per­son at polling places.

“As of 7:30 AM today, 24,295 Mis­sis­sip­pi­ans request­ed absen­tee bal­lots for the March 10th Pri­ma­ry Elec­tion, and 21,392 absen­tee bal­lots have been returned to Cir­cuit Clerks’ Offices,” state elec­tions offi­cials announced.

“We are excit­ed to see the increase in absen­tee vot­ing and hope those num­bers equate to a large turnout at the polls today,” said Sec­re­tary Michael Wat­son. “We’re encour­ag­ing all Mis­sis­sip­pi­ans to exer­cise their right to vote today.”

The news release went on to note:

“Cur­rent­ly, Mis­sis­sip­pi has 1,920,958 active reg­is­tered vot­ers, which is about 4% high­er than the num­ber of active vot­ers for the 2016 Pres­i­den­tial Pri­ma­ry Elec­tions (1,848,450). In the 2016 Pres­i­den­tial Pri­ma­ry Elec­tions, 20,842 absen­tee bal­lots were request­ed, with 18,467 absen­tee bal­lots returned.”

“The num­ber of absen­tee votes cast in 2016 Repub­li­can Pri­ma­ry Elec­tion totaled 11,546, and the num­ber of votes cast in the 2016 Demo­c­ra­t­ic Pri­ma­ry Elec­tion totaled 6,921, for a grand total of 18,467 absen­tee votes cast.”

Oth­er states hold­ing nom­i­nat­ing events today include Michi­gan, Democ­rats Abroad, and Wash­ing­ton and Ida­ho here in the Pacif­ic Northwest.