Joe Biden is now frontrunner

Joe Biden won Florida-Illinois and Arizona primaries

Former U.S vice president Joe Biden has taken another important step towards winning the nomination of Democratic Party. He won three state primaries in Florida-Illinois and Arizona with clear margin against his rival Bernie Sanders. Biden is leading in the tally of delegates won so far. He has won 1180 delegates against the 884 of Bernie Sanders.

Even though there are primaries or caucuses scheduled into June, most of the delegates — 58 percent — have already been allotted, due to the front loaded calendar. Only 42 percent of delegates remain in future contests.

Furthermore, though Biden is still a ways off from outright clinching a pledged delegate majority — he needs 1,991 to do that, and will probably end up with around 1,200 once delegate totals are finalized — Democrats’ proportional allocation rules will make it incredibly difficult for him to lose his lead.

For Sanders to pass Biden in pledged delegates now, he’ll have to win future primaries by something like 30 percentage points on average. But Sanders hasn’t won even a single state by anywhere near that much so far, except for his home state of Vermont. Unless there’s a stunning and catastrophic collapse in Biden’s support, this simply isn’t going to happen.

If the present trend continued till June then Biden will eventually win the nomination. It seems that he will be able to get the required number of pledged delegates. 

Joe Biden has come back strongly after hammered in the first few primaries. Bernie Sanders was the frontrunner until Biden bounced back on the eve of Super Tuesday. Since then Joe Biden has kept his momentum thanks to centre right voters- endorsement from Pete Buttigieg -Michael Bloomberg and other centrist candidates which exit the race.

The older white voters and African Americans are providing solid support to Biden campaign so far. The overwhelming majority of both older and black voters along with centrist ones helped the Biden to regain the ground.    Biden is also doing well among the independent voters in many states.

It all started from Biden’s South Carolina victory, which elevated the former vice president back up to a top-tier contender, spurred several of his rivals to drop out, and was interpreted by many Democratic voters across the country as a signal that Biden was the main alternative to Sanders.

Super Tuesday was decisive for both candidates. Bernie Sanders victory could practically have ended the Biden’s chances. But Biden succeeded to rebound at the right time.  Joe Biden regained ground just as nearly 60 percent of the total delegates in the Democratic contest were about to be allotted on Super Tuesday and the two weeks following it.

So Biden ended up winning the most states in this period. Even more importantly, he won several of those states in landslides — most notably in the South, where he picked up at least 30 delegates more than Sanders in each of Alabama, Virginia, North Carolina, and Mississippi. The former vice president also netted 15 delegates over Sanders in Missouri and Michigan.

In contrast, the only March state where Sanders won a large delegate advantage was California, and his edge there was easily swamped by all the big wins Biden put together.

                                                      Khalid Bhatti