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.