Biden and Sanders Wait For Vote Amid Canceled Rallies

Biden easily won Mississippi, a state that Sen. Bernie Sanders all but conceded to him in the primary race, and Missouri, defeating Sanders in a state he nearly won four years ago.

Michigan is the big prize, since it awards the most delegates. Voters also cast ballots in Washington, Idaho and North Dakota.

Biden has shown strength with black voters, a group that boosted him to victory in yet another Southern state. Mississippi is the most heavily African American state in the country.

Recognizing Biden’s advantage, Sanders canceled a planned visit to Jackson, Mississippi, where he has the support of the mayor, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, in favor of campaigning in Michigan.

The question was never whether Biden would win Mississippi, but about the size of his victory.

Similarly, nearly one-fifth of the Missouri’s Democratic electorate is black. After facing skepticism from black voters four years ago, Sanders has struggled to improve his level of support among a group that makes up a key base of the party.

Four years ago, Sanders lost by a slim margin in Missouri to Hillary Clinton. His loss this time around yet again underscores the challenges he’s faced over expanding his coalition of voters. Sanders entered the primary election with polling showing him down by double-digits to Biden.

One of Sanders’ big arguments for his campaign has been that his supporters are uniquely enthusiastic about his candidacy. But preliminary exit polls contain some evidence that Biden’s supporters are equally or even more enthusiastic.

In preliminary exit polls from Washington, the same percentage of Democratic voters — 35% — said they would be “enthusiastic” if Biden won the nomination as if Sanders won. Polls from Missouri found that significantly more people would be enthusiastic if Biden won: 45%, compared with 31% for Sanders.

Conversely, about twice as many people said they would be “upset” if Sanders won (16% in each state) than said the same about Biden (8% in Missouri and 9% in Washington).

Exit polls in Mississippi did not ask the enthusiasm question, and the polls in Michigan are unreliable because they did not include absentee voters.

The preliminary polls in Washington, Missouri and Mississippi also found that a majority of voters were more concerned with nominating a candidate who they believed could beat President Donald Trump than one who agreed with them on major issues.

In the first major cancellations of the presidential campaign because of concerns about the coronavirus, Sanders and Biden both called off primary night campaign events Tuesday as they awaited the results of voting.

While there was little hard proof that the coronavirus had affected turnout in Tuesday’s primaries, officials in two states blamed it for keeping people away from polls.

In Mississippi, which was holding presidential primaries as well as party nomination votes in several key congressional races, the chairman of the state Democratic Party cited the virus as one reason turnout was lower than he had hoped.

“It seems to be somewhat light or moderate,” said Bobby Moak, the Democratic chairman in Mississippi. Moak cited rain in the southern part of the state as a factor as well as vacation season — it was spring break statewide for all high schools and colleges — and fear of coronavirus transmission.

“And I think some of it may be the dad-gum coronavirus is on people’s minds,” Moak said. No one in Mississippi has been diagnosed with the illness.

In Missouri, Tammy Brown, an elections official in Jackson County, near Kansas City, blamed coronavirus for scaring voters. “It just doesn’t seem like there’s a huge turnout,” she said.

About two dozen poll judges had called in sick, she said.

“I think some of them were just scared to deal with the public,” Brown said.

In St. Louis, Gary Stoff, the director of elections, said he was not aware that anyone remained home because they feared the coronavirus, even though one of the city polling places was a school that had been shut because the parent of a student believed he might have been exposed. (The lunchroom where balloting was held had been thoroughly sanitized, he said.)

Stoff said turnout was running slightly higher than in 2016.

The Michigan secretary of state warned that the results of today’s primary may not be known until “well into” Wednesday, as the state adjusts to changes in its elections system that are meant to enhance security and give more people access to the ballot.

“I am keenly aware that the eyes of the country will be awaiting the outcome of our presidential primary this evening,” Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, wrote in an opinion piece published Tuesday in USA Today. “And they will need to wait a little longer than usual.”

Benson cited the significant increase in the amount of work that officials across the state will have to do because of the new rules, in addition to what she said was a 95% increase in the number of requests for absentee ballots.

If the results are late, she said, it will not be because of fraud or error but because “our election administrators are working diligently to carry out the additional work on their plates in a way that is ethical and accurate.”

If Biden can roll to a decisive victory over Sanders in Michigan — as polls have suggested he might — there is the possibility that he may effectively wrap up the nomination at a time when Democratic voters are eager to turn their focus to Trump, though Sanders’ next moves would be unclear.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .