Joe Biden emerged victorious in the 2020 Missouri Democratic primary contest against Bernie Sanders.
The two-term vice president attracted 59.1% of the vote and 33-plus delegates to Sanders’s 32.5% and 15-plus delegates, with 29% of precincts reporting.
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Along with Michigan, Missouri became a battleground for the pair in the March 10 round of primaries. It’s where Biden held his first rally after Super Tuesday, debuting a new seven-minute stump speech, a change of pace for the typically loquacious politician.
But the truncated address didn’t mean Delaware’s 36-year senator skipped over his usual verbal stumbles.
“If you want to nominate a Democrat, a lifelong Democrat, a proud Democrat, an Obiden-Bama Democrat, join us,” he said, miffing his own name.
The event, however, showed momentum was building behind Biden, attracting a sizable crowd compared to those he drew in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Meanwhile, Sanders canceled a Kansas City stop in lieu of a coronavirus roundtable in Detroit.
In 2016, Sanders, the Vermont senator, was beaten in the state by his then-Democratic rival Hillary Clinton by only 0.2 percentage points, 49.6% to 49.4%. Yet, four years later, Biden was beating him in most polls. RealClearPolitics data gave him an average lead of 18.6 percentage points the day before voters cast their ballots.
This cycle, Missouri presents candidates with the chance to scoop up their share of 68 pledged delegates.
Heading into the March 10 series of multistate contests, Biden led Sanders in the delegate count, 635 to his 558. A total of 1,991 delegates is needed to win the Democratic nomination at the party’s convention this summer.
