UPDATE, 6:53 PM PT: Joe Biden was declared the winner in Minnesota, where his campaign raced to get an ad on the air on Tuesday in which the state’s senator, Amy Klobuchar, endorses him after getting out of the race.
Biden so far has also been declared the winner in Oklahoma, Tennessee, Virginia, Alabama and North Carolina.
Bernie Sanders was leading in one of the biggest delegate prizes of the evening, Texas.
UPDATE, 6:43 PM PT: Bernie Sanders got a bit of good news by winning Colorado, his first Super Tuesday win outside his home state of Vermont, the Associated Press projected.
Joe Biden, meanwhile, added Oklahoma and Tennessee to his wins, after being declared the victor in Virginia, North Carolina and Alabama earlier in the evening.
But the race is still too close to call in one of the bigger prizes of the evening, Texas. Sanders holds a slight lead over Biden.
Michael Bloomberg will win delegates, but some of the TV commentary has been on how the results so far have been a bust for his campaign.
“When you spend that kind of money on air, people know your blood type,” said CBS News’ John Dickerson. “He’s in everyone’s living room, almost literally.” But the campaign strategy is faltering, he said, because voters “don’t like him the more they hear from him.”
PREVIOUSLY, 5:38 PM PT: Michael Bloomberg tried to put the best face on early Super Tuesday returns by telling supporters in Florida by noting how high he rose in the polls.
“No matter how many delegates we win tonight, we have done something no one else thought was possible: In just three months, we have gone from 1% in the polls to a contender for the Democratic nomination.”
He’s right, but Super Tuesday will be measured in delegates, and he so far has won only American Samoa while Joe Biden has won Virginia, North Carolina and Alabama. Bernie Sanders was declared the winner in Vermont.
Bloomberg’s speech was carried on MSNBC and Fox News but not CNN, which stuck to John King’s deep dive into the night’s returns.
Bloomberg did get in a dig at President Donald Trump, who had mocked Bloomberg’s pizza eating skills in a tweet earlier in the evening.
“Unlike the president, I didn’t come here to golf, or to reveal classified information to Mar-A-Lago members,” Bloomberg said of his visit to West Palm Beach, not too far from Trump’s digs. “I came here because winning in November starts with Florida.”
Bloomberg said that he can win states like Florida that Democrats lost in 2016. “I know we can do it, and you know who else knows it? Donald Trump. And that’s why he keeps attacking us on Twitter.”
Bloomberg’s record spending has been an ongoing theme of the evening’s coverage.
On MSNBC Brian Williams said that Bloomberg “was not having the night he thought he paid for, not having the night he was hoping for.”
ABC News’ Cecilia Vega marveled at the amounts being spent. “This is an anecdotal thing, they are feeding the supporters who have showed up here, there’s wine flowing, there’s food flowing. There is no shortage of money in this campaign. He’s spent more than $176,000 on ads per delegate up for grabs on this Super Tuesday. This money is just unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.”
PREVIOUSLY, 5:01 PM PT: Joe Biden continued his Super Tuesday winning streak, as he was declared the winner of Alabama, after winning Virginia and North Carolina earlier in the evening.
Polls closed in five other states at 5 p.m. PT — Maine, Massachusetts, Oklahoma and Tennessee — but were too early to call. Some of the polls also closed in Texas.
The fact that Sanders wasn’t immediately called the winner in Maine and Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts was taken as another signal that this will be a less-than-expected evening for their campaigns.
On Fox News, contributor Donna Brazile took a shot at Bernie Sanders’ rhetoric against the “establishment,” noting Biden’s strength with African-American voters.
She said, “I want to just say something, Bernie. I am a member of the establishment. Deal with it. Stop this anger toward people who work to establish a Democratic party that works for everyone. I am a black woman that did not have the right to vote when I was born, but I have the right to vote now. And the fact that Bernie is using all of his time, a candidate who is talking about, you know, enlarging the electorate and he is saying establishment people cannot be in the process? I’m in the process, Bernie.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Brazile went off on Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel. Brazile told McDaniel to “go to hell” after McDaniel tried to foment Democratic divisions by suggesting that the primary process was rigged against Sanders.
PREVIOUSLY, 4:33 PM PT: The night is young, but it’s looking like a good Super Tuesday so far for Joe Biden.
Coming off a win in Virginia, the ex-Veep has been declared the winner in North Carolina with its 112 delegates.
“Feels good, I don’t know what the outcome of the actual results are, but it feels good and we’re feeling optimistic,” Biden told MSNBC at a campaign stop in L.A. as the results from the Old Dominion. “I think we are going to do good in some other states as well,” the man many counted as DOA up until his South Carolina win on February 29.
Overall, 1,344 delegates are at stake tonight with Biden and Bernie Sanders vying for the heart and head of the Democrats. In that vein, Michael Bloomberg has won American Samoa. The six delegates for the three-term ex-NYC Mayor are the first for the one time Republican billionaire in his first time on a Democratic ballot
PREVIOUSLY, 4:02 PM PT: News networks kicked off the first results of Super Tuesday, the most consequential day of the 2020 election so far, with Joe Biden declared the winner in Virginia while Bernie Sanders was projected to win Vermont.
Unsurprisingly, Sanders was expected to win his home state, but Biden’s early and seemingly easy victory in Virginia signaled that his blowout win in South Carolina on Saturday may have greatly changed the dynamics of the presidential race in his favor.
“Tonight, we may be asking if Bernie Sanders has a firewall in California,” pondered MSBC analyst and Washington Post columnist Gene Robinson on this Super Tuesday as that super result for the ex-VP came in from the la d of Thomas Jefferson that Sen. Sanders had invested considerable time in for hopes of snagging some of Virginia’s 99 delegates. Another MSNBC talking head had his own take on what was going down:
Bernie invested a good bit of time in Virginia. For the networks to call it for Biden straight up at 7pm suggests a good night for @JoeBiden. https://t.co/SIvPJyNl1m
— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) March 4, 2020
With a primary moved up from its usual June date, the Golden State’s 416 delegates are the most of any state on this big night.
After counting down to the first results, networks quickly made their first calls, with their projections based on exit polls gathered throughout the day.
Fourteen states, including California, representing more than one-third of the Democratic delegates, have primary races on Tuesday. The results likely will reshape the race, in what many pundits predict will end up as a race between Sanders and Biden.
The election contests also are a make-or-break time for Michael Bloomberg. After spending more than $500 million on the race, he is finally on the ballot, in a test of his strategy bypass early primary states for maximum impact across the country. But Biden’s win in Virginia, where Bloomberg reportedly spent $18 million on TV and radio ads, is a disappointment for his campaign.
“The amount of return that Mike Bloomberg is getting on this investment is something that he has to look into,” said CNN’s Jake Tapper, in what may be an understatement of the evening.
Elizabeth Warren also is hoping for a surprise finish in some states, as many of her supporters complain that she is being ignored by the media — and even other campaigns. Asked about her campaign by a reporter earlier on Tuesday, Bloomberg, in a bit of snark, replied, “I didn’t realize she was still in. Is she?”
Sanders has benefited from consistent enthusiasm, particularly among younger voters, at rallies that well outdraw his rivals. A rally in Los Angeles on Sunday, headlined by Public Enemy Radio, drew more than 10,000.
Biden, meanwhile, saw a flood of media attention on Monday as he garnered the endorsements of former rivals Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Beto O’Rourke.
Some 1,344 delegates are at stake.