Joe Biden got the bulk of attention from early Super Tuesday results by handily sweeping states in Eastern and Central time zones, but Bernie Sanders is getting his late piece of the Super Tuesday pie in California.
California will allocate 415 delegates to Democratic presidential candidates based on Tuesday’s vote, the most of any other Super Tuesday state.
The Associated Press called the state for Sanders soon after polls closed. California exit polls found that the Vermont senator captured 55% support from Hispanic voters.
As full California results trickle in, it could help Sanders fend off Biden’s early delegate lead from states in later time zones and give him fuel to argue that Biden does not appeal to a majority of the country. News organizations called Virginia, North Carolina, and Alabama for Biden just seconds after polls closed, indicating that his wins were by such big margins that they could not be in doubt.
Biden’s victory on Saturday in South Carolina, followed by the quick endorsements of former rivals Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, and Beto O’Rourke, gave a serious boost to what had been a flagging campaign that many people were already writing off.
About 40% of California’s primary electorate votes absentee by mail, meaning that Biden’s wave of endorsements from former rivals on Monday could have a smaller effect there.
Mail-in ballots could also delay declaring a winner in the state’s primary, with the last ballots expected to arrive in mid-March.
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Results from 14 states plus the territory of American Samoa on Tuesday account for 1,347 pledged nominating delegates, about one-third of the total. A candidate needs a majority of 1,991 pledged delegates to win the nomination on the first Democratic National Convention ballot and prevent a contested convention. In the event of a brokered convention, about 770 automatic superdelegates, party leaders such as Democratic National Committee members and Democratic members of Congress, are permitted to vote for whomever they wish.
Delegates are allocated based on the proportion of statewide votes and votes within congressional districts (except for Texas, which allocates district delegates based on state Senate districts rather than congressional districts). Candidates must obtain 15% support statewide or in at least one district to earn delegates, meaning that a candidate could pick up some district delegates even if they do not capture more than 15% support statewide.
