It has been over a week since Super Tuesday and many states are still counting their votes. While delegate counts may not be final yet, projected winners are available and analysis can be made as to what this will mean in the election going forward.
The election results on Super Tuesday shocked a lot of people with how they completely disregarded predicted outcomes, leading to massive withdrawals from the race. Currently, only three candidates remain, Joe Biden, Burnie Sanders, and Tulsi Gabbard. Massachusetts senator Elizbeth Warren dropped out of the race on March 5th after only finishing third in her state. This completely contradicted poles and predictions that assumed that the race in MA would be very close between her and Sanders. Instead, people were shocked as Joe Biden overwhelmingly won the state, taking 37 of the 91 delegates available, with 99% of votes counted. For context, Sanders won 29 delegates and Warren won 25, meaning that Biden won twelve more delegates than Warren in her state.
The only other candidate running in the Super Tuesday Election was Mike Bloomberg, who dropped out on March 4th. Bloomberg only won 61 delegates total, a minuscule number compared to Joe Biden’s 629. Warren didn’t do much better than Bloomberg, winning 63. Warren’s delegate numbers are shocking coming from someone who was once the race’s front runner.
So, what do the results of Super Tuesday mean going forward? Who won, and what does that mean? At a glance, it is easy to say that Biden won the election. He won ten states and got the largest delegate count by a long shot, surpassing Sanders’ 539 by 90 delegates. But what does that mean? Why did Biden win so many states? The answer lies in two main demographics. Firstly, Biden the majority of votes for people ages 45-64 as well as 65 and older. Though this was predicted, it still helped to push Biden to the top spot in this race. However, the shock in Biden’s victory came from black voter turnout as they overwhelmingly supported Biden. 58% of black voters chose to support Biden. Another interesting statistic is that 47% of undecided voters chose to vote for Joe Biden.
When asked what she thought of the election results, Hingham High School senior, Molly Bombard stated, “I think it was unexpected how Biden shot to the top of the election in 72 hours”. It truly was an unexpected turn of events as Biden has been dragging behind in the poles before Super Tuesday.
But what about Sanders? It was predicted that young voters would turn out in force to support Sanders, and in a way, they did, causing him to win 58% of voters age 18-29 and 41% for ages 30-44. However, while young voters did overwhelmingly vote for Sanders, they didn’t come out with the force they were expected to, leaving Sanders to fall behind in delegate count. While Biden won the black vote, Sanders won largely among Latino voters, especially in states such as California and Texas. Sadly for Sanders, this win wasn’t enough for him to match Biden in delegates.
Going forward, voters in later elections will have to choose between two very polarizing candidates. Will they choose to side with Sanders’ political revolution? Or will they swing toward moderate Joe Biden? Only time will tell who the candidate to face off against Trump will be coming November.
Senior Riley Potter states, “I want whoever is going to be the democratic candidate, I want them to win. We have got to beat Trump, I just don’t want Trump to win.” For many Democrats, this is the stance they must have going forward. At this stage in the election, voting for the most viable candidate is all democrats can do.