NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2020

Texas, Oklahoma early Super Tuesday results: Sanders leads in Texas, Sooners flock to Biden

Ear­ly 2020 Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry results from Texas and Okla­homa are in, and Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders look to have split the states thus far.

Oklahoma

The Asso­ci­at­ed Press has called the pri­ma­ry in the Soon­er State in favor of Joe Biden. At the time this post was writ­ten, with 50% of precincts report­ing, Biden was tak­ing home 36% of the vote.

Bernie Sanders is twelve points behind at 24%. Biden is lead­ing in every coun­ty except Cleve­land Coun­ty, home to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Okla­homa in Norman.

CNN’s exit poll indi­cat­ed that Biden would secure around 40% of the vote.

Com­men­ta­tors were paint­ing Biden’s per­for­mance in Okla­homa as an exten­sion of his com­mand­ing Super Tues­day per­for­mance in the South. Biden has car­ried Alaba­ma, North Car­oli­na, and Vir­ginia by deci­sive margins.

Out of Okla­homa’s forty-two del­e­gates, twen­ty-four will be allo­cat­ed based on results from each of the five con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts, while thir­teen will be allo­cat­ed based on statewide results.

The remain­ing ques­tion is whether Michael Bloomberg and Eliz­a­beth War­ren will reach via­bil­i­ty — and where they will do it. At the time of writ­ing, Michael Bloomberg was just above the 15% via­bil­i­ty thresh­old in Okla­homa at 15.19%. War­ren was lag­ging behind at 13.3% in her birth state (she grew up in Norman).

Texas

Sanders leads in the Lone Star State, but it’s early.

Ear­ly results in Texas show Bernie Sanders in the dri­ver’s seat.

With 4% of precincts report­ing, Sanders is at 29%.

Biden is at 22.5%, and Bloomberg is at 19%.

It is note­wor­thy that 8% of the vote in Texas has been cast for Pete Buttigieg and 4% has gone to Amy Klobuchar… can­di­dates who exit­ed the race with­in the past sev­en­ty-two hours and threw their sup­port to the for­mer Vice President.

Their per­cent­ages will like­ly decrease as more bal­lots are count­ed from today.

While both fail to hit the 15% via­bil­i­ty thresh­old, Buttigieg and Klobuchar have had an impact in Texas: 22% of vot­ers sur­veyed in the CNN exit poll in Texas stat­ed they decid­ed with­in the last few days, and 49% of them broke for Biden.

Vot­ers who made their deci­sion ear­li­er (36%) favored Sanders.

The CNN live blog offered this hypoth­e­sis on why the race is so close:

As in oth­er states, exit polls show black Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry vot­ers in Texas heav­i­ly favored Joe Biden, with rough­ly six in ten sup­port­ing the for­mer vice pres­i­dent — but blacks make up only about a fifth of the Texas electorate.

Sen­a­tor Bernie Sanders, on the oth­er hand, drew more than four in ten His­pan­ics, who account for just under a third of the Texas pri­ma­ry electorate.

Vot­ers in the Lone Star State also split by age group, giv­ing Biden a way to make up the dif­fer­ence. He was heav­i­ly favored by vot­ers over forty-five, who made up about two-thirds of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­torate, while those under forty-five went for Sanders.

149 del­e­gates are to be allo­cat­ed based on pro­por­tion­al results in the thir­ty-one sen­a­to­r­i­al dis­tricts, while sev­en­ty-nine del­e­gates will be allo­cat­ed based on the statewide result (unlike most states, the Texas Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty allo­cates state del­e­gates based on sen­a­to­r­i­al districts).

228 of 261 del­e­gates from Texas will be pledged based on today’s voting.

That is the sec­ond-largest del­e­gate haul avail­able both tonight and in the entire nom­i­nee selec­tion process; Cal­i­for­nia is the only larg­er state.

With so many del­e­gates at stake, clear­ing the 15% thresh­old statewide and in cer­tain sen­a­to­r­i­al dis­tricts in Texas is crit­i­cal for all candidates.

Bloomberg looks like he will do so as he sits at 19% with a quar­ter of precincts in.

Just like in Okla­homa, how­ev­er, War­ren looks like she will fin­ish under the thresh­old at around 13%, mark­ing anoth­er dis­ap­point­ing night for the senior Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor from Massachusetts.

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