Joe Biden wins Texas primary battle, with slim lead over Bernie Sanders
It was nothing less than a super battle on Super Tuesday.
The fight for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination stayed tight in Texas, and was too close to call hours after the polls closed when former Vice President Joe Biden and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders remained neck-and-neck, pulling ahead of other presidential hopefuls.
At 6:15 a.m. Wednesday, with 95% of the vote in, Biden had 32.4% of the vote, with Sanders at 29.7%, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg 15.5% and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s 11.6%. The Associated Press declared Biden the winner about six hours after the polls closed Tuesday night.
Texas results were still being tallied as reports showed Biden was projected to win Alabama, Arkansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Virginia and Sanders was projected to win Colorado, Utah and Vermont. Bloomberg was projected to win American Samoa.
Biden said “it’s a good night — and it seems to be getting even better.”
“They don’t call it Super Tuesday for nothing,” he said from a rally in California. “It’s still early, but things are looking awful, awful good. ... I’m here to report we are very much alive.
“This campaign will send Donald Trump packing.”
Sanders said he didn’t know how the results would end up at the end of the night, but he noted that “we are doing well in Texas.”
“When we began this race for the presidency, everybody said it couldn’t be done,” he said at a rally in his home state of Vermont. “Tonight I tell you with absolute confidence, we are going to win the Democratic nomination and we are going to defeat the most dangerous president in the history of this country.”
President Donald Trump claimed a massive lead and was easily declared the winner, as expected, in the Texas Republican presidential primary.
Regarding the Democratic presidential primary, Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale said it appears no candidate can win the nomination outright during the first ballot vote at their convention.
Whether Sanders or Biden wins the Democratic nomination, the result will be the same, he said: “President Trump will wipe the floor with whatever Democrat is unlucky enough to be the nominee.”
Texas was the second biggest prize of Super Tuesday, behind California, because of the number of delegates that will be awarded to the Democratic presidential candidates.
California has 415 delegates. Texas has 261 delegates.
The bulk of the Texas delegates, 228, will be awarded Tuesday, 149 from the state Senate districts and 79 across the state. The other 33 are made up of Democratic members of Congress and DNC members.
First test
Tarrant County picked with Biden 38.2%, according to unoffical results. Sanders had 30.8% and Bloomberg 15.5%.
The last time Tarrant County didn’t vote as the state did in a presidential race was 1976, when voters here supported Republican Gerald Ford, but Democrat Jimmy Carter won the state, according to research conducted by the Texas Legislative Reference Library.
This was the first set of primary elections for Bloomberg, who jumped into the presidential race too late to get on the ballot in some of the earlier states.
Texas was a key test for Bloomberg.
“If the vast monetary advantage possessed by Bloomberg over his rivals is going to help him in any state, it would be Texas,” said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston.
Bloomberg thanked supporters Tuesday night from a campaign watch party in Florida.
“No matter how many delegates we win tonight, we have done something no one thought was possible,” he said. “In just three months, we’ve gone from 1 percent in the polls to being a contender for the Democratic nomination for president.”
In recent days, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota and philanthropist Tom Steyer dropped out of the race.
Candidates in Texas
Democratic presidential candidates have been campaigning in Texas recently, hoping to draw last minute support. This, even though more than 2 million Texans — including more than 138,000 Tarrant voters — cast early ballots.
Sanders, who hosted a rally in Mesquite on Valentine’s Day, came into the day as the front-runner with the highest delegate count, despite Biden’s recent South Carolina victory that revitalized his campaign.
With the new momentum, which some Democrats nicknamed “Joementum,” Biden rallied in Dallas Monday night, drawing endorsements from Buttigieg, Klobuchar and Beto O’Rourke of El Paso. Warren and Bloomberg also made last-minute campaign stops in Texas.
All this in what is known as a conservative, traditionally red state.
“Texas is still a Republican state, but there are indications that it could even be competitive in the fall,” said Jim Riddlesperger, a political science professor at TCU. “To be sure, President Trump’s popularity is higher in Texas than it is elsewhere, and he is likely to win. But if Texas is even seen as potentially competitive, it would make a big difference in election strategies for both parties.”
It’s not often this state has enough of a voice to lure presidential candidates here, because the nominations generally are all but solidified by the time Texans head to the polls.
Two notable exceptions: The Democratic battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in 2008 and the GOP battle that included Donald Trump and Ted Cruz in 2016.
This year’s Democratic primary has been described as crucial by many who say the best candidate needs to be chosen to go toe-to-toe with Trump in November.
“Democrats want Trump out of office,” Tarrant County Democratic Party Chairwoman Deborah Peoples said.
As the results were counted in Super Tuesday states, most candidates had already moved on, focusing on the next batch of primaries March 10 in Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota and Washington.
This story was originally published March 3, 2020 at 7:40 PM.
