Super Tuesday finally put to bed the inane theory that Bernie Sanders could win the White House by driving unprecedented voter turnout.
He seems to have raised turnout, all right, by Democrats looking to deny him their party’s presidential nomination.
People should have seen this coming. Despite winning the first three states of the 2020 primary, Sanders actually underperformed in Iowa and New Hampshire. The Vermont senator barely beat Pete Buttigieg in the latter state and technically lost to him in the former, despite starting the race with much better polling and name recognition. And although Sanders did overperform the polls in Nevada, like in Iowa, turnout was a lot lower than that of 2008.
Despite the anecdotal evidence, Sanders continued to boast that he’d drive out unprecedented turnout. Super Tuesday finally debunked his promise, all thanks to the astounding and perhaps confounding resurgence of Joe Biden.
After Jim Clyburn endorsed the former vice president, delivering him a blowout in South Carolina and undoubtedly saving his campaign, Biden was back. But the polls failed to predict just how much momentum the once and future front-runner had going into the night. Yes, Biden deserves plaudits for vital victories in Virginia and North Carolina, but most impressive were the upsets that put the final nails in the coffin of the Sanders turnout theory.
For starters, despite barely campaigning in the state, Biden won Massachusetts, beating Elizabeth Warren in her home state and Sanders in his own backyard. More impressive were two states Biden took that Sanders once won against Hillary Clinton.
In 2016, more than 125,000 voters helped Sanders beat Clinton by 23 points in Minnesota. In Oklahoma, 174,228 helped him best her by more than 10. Tonight, Biden earned the votes of nearly 200,000 Minnesotans, beating Sanders by more than 8 points. Biden beat Sanders by more than 13 points in Oklahoma, or by more than 40,000 votes.
Meanwhile, turnout in Virginia doubled from 2016 and surpassed that of 2008, only to give Biden a 400,000-vote lead over Sanders. North Carolina saw its turnout slightly slide since 2016, but only to give Biden a lead over Sanders even greater than what Clinton earned.
Meanwhile, exit polls continue to reflect a fundamental fact of voting: Young people, the crux of the Sanders campaign, simply don’t turn out to vote.
Sanders’s boom came when the primary field was most fractured. He promised he could carry a win with turnout, but, as Biden’s resurgence proves, the only way to win isn’t to wish for invisible voters to emerge from the sidelines but rather build coalitions of voters you already know are there.
There’s a turnout juggernaut in this race, but it’s Biden, not Sanders.
