Former Vice President Joe Biden has the wind at his back following Super Tuesday, and is now leading Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the former front-runner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, in the all-important battleground states of Florida and Michigan.
The Michigan primary, which takes place next Tuesday, is being largely regarded as Sanders’ last stand. He won the state against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Democratic primary, and has a base of progressive support in the state that was supposed to give him the lead against more “moderate” candidates like Biden. It was the first clue for the doomed Clinton campaign that the former Secretary of State wasn’t as popular in the midwest as Democrats’ might have hoped, but also the first sign that Sanders’ brand of “Democratic socialism” had staying power.
This time around, Michigan voters are being practical, according to Politico, swinging towards Biden even before the former Veep pulled ahead in the delegate count on Super Tuesday.
“Even before Sanders’ woebegone Tuesday — marked by losses to Joe Biden throughout the South and in Massachusetts and Minnesota — a Detroit News/WDIV-TV poll put Biden ahead of Sanders by nearly 7 percentage points in Michigan,” the outlet reported Thursday, adding that the Biden campaign believes a win in Michigan will put away Sanders for good.
“Biden can finish Bernie off in Michigan,” one former Sanders aide told Politico.
Sanders is still holding out hope, though, that he can turn blue parts of Michigan bluer. The Vermont socialist will hold rallies in two of the state’s largest cities — Detroit and Grand Rapids — this week, and his operation plans to focus, reportedly, on turning out the vote on college campuses where Sanders is experiencing outsized popularity, and among union members. A poll, taken by Detroit’s NBC affiliate in the days before Super Tuesday, did show that 30% of voters were undecided, but that has likely changed since Biden took his commanding lead.
One thing working in Sanders’ favor: Biden has almost no operation in Michigan and has spent just $500,000 in the state so far and will attend his first fundraiser in the state at the end of this week.
If Sanders chooses to remain the race after Michigan, he’ll go on to face Biden in Florida, another state expected to be a battleground in the 2020 presidential election — and a state that went narrowly to President Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
He’s not expected to win — and that’s something of an understatement.
“More than 61% of likely Florida voters favor Biden, according to the most recent survey by St. Pete Pollscommissioned by Florida Politics (the full PDF of the poll is embedded below),” Florida Politics reports. “That gives the former Vice President a commanding lead over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, at 12%, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, with 5%.”
In Florida, Biden is benefitting from former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s decision to end his campaign. Biden, who was already well in the lead in Florida going into Super Tuesday, picked up an additional 20 points on Wednesday, after Bloomberg made his announcement.