Joe Biden revives campaign, winning nine states, but Bernie Sanders takes California

Yet Biden’s sweep of states across the South and the Midwest showed he had the makings of a formidable coalition that could propel him through the primaries.




By Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns

The Democratic presidential race emerged from Super Tuesday with two clear front-runners as Joe Biden won Texas, Virginia, North Carolina and at least six other states, largely through support from African Americans and moderates, while Sen. Bernie Sanders harnessed the backing of liberals and young voters to claim the biggest prize of the campaign, California, and several other primaries.

The returns across the country on the biggest night of voting suggested that the Democratic contest was increasingly focused on two candidates who are standard-bearers for competing wings of the party, Biden in the political center and Sanders on the left. Their two other major rivals, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Michael Bloomberg, were on track to finish well behind them and faced an uncertain path forward.

Biden’s victories came chiefly in the South and the Midwest, and in some of them he won by unexpectedly wide margins. In a surprising upset, Biden even captured Warren’s home state of Massachusetts, where he did not appear in person, and where Sanders had campaigned aggressively in recent days.

It was a remarkable show of force for Biden, the former vice president. In just three days he resurrected a campaign that had been on the verge of collapse after he lost the first three nominating states. But he bounced back with a landslide win in South Carolina on Saturday, and on Tuesday, in addition to victories in Texas, Virginia, North Carolina and Massachusetts, he prevailed in Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Minnesota.

Sanders rebounded late in the evening in delegate-rich Western states: He was quickly declared the winner in Colorado and Utah after polls closed there, and he also claimed the largest delegate lode of the primary race, California, The Associated Press reported. Sanders also easily carried his home state of Vermont.

Yet Biden’s sweep of states across the South and the Midwest showed he had the makings of a formidable coalition that could propel him through the primaries.

“We were told, well, when you got to Super Tuesday, it’d be over,” a triumphant Biden, 77, said at a celebration in Los Angeles. “Well, it may be over for the other guy!”

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