Can Biden cut into Sanders’ California lead? At least 3.4 million ballots remain uncounted
California may not have been the resounding victory Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders had hoped for heading into Super Tuesday.
While The Associated Press declared him the winner of California’s Democratic presidential primary election shortly after the polls closed, at least 3.4 million ballots remain uncounted, according reports from counties to the Secretary of State’s office Friday afternoon.
A sizable chunk of those outstanding votes could go to former Vice President Joe Biden, which has kept CNN and NBC News from calling the race for Sanders.
But California experts say the question of whether Sanders won is not the one worth asking.
“The question will be how close Biden will get to Sanders and how many delegates he manages to take from Sanders,” said Mindy Romero, director of the California Civic Engagement Project at USC. “It wasn’t as strong of a night for Sanders, and California was supposed to be his prize. If he splits the delegates with Biden, his big prize isn’t a huge win.”
Because voters who cast their ballots later in the process tend to be younger and more liberal than the general electorate, though, it may be difficult for Biden to make up much more ground.
“We’ll see Sanders and Biden getting votes and the gap between them staying stable,” said Paul Mitchell, vice president of the bipartisan voter data firm Political Data, Inc.
Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School, said Biden statistically has a chance to overtake Sanders but not a practical one.
“Biden would need such consistency in terms of really winning the vast majority of the late votes, and there is something to be said for the conventional wisdom that young people and minorities (vote later),” Levinson said.
Polls of California voters leading up to the state’s primary overwhelmingly had Sanders in a commanding lead, especially over Biden. Days before the South Carolina primary, UC Berkeley had Sanders in first place with 34 percent support and Biden in fifth at just 8 percent of the backing among likely Democratic primary voters.
A dominant performance in South Carolina from Biden, however, boosted him in ways polls couldn’t accurately reflect in time for the Golden State’s March 3 primary election. The last-minute exits of Tom Steyer, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar on Saturday, Sunday and Monday also gave Biden much-needed momentum among late California voters.
As of Friday evening, Biden had 25 percent of the statewide vote, while Sanders had 34 percent share of the vote. That translated to 186 delegates for Sanders, 148 for Biden, 15 for former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and 5 for Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, according to AP. Bloomberg dropped out Wednesday, and Warren left the race on Thursday morning.
Sanders gained four percentage points on Hillary Clinton in California’s 2016 primary as the outstanding ballots trickled in. Mitchell expects something similar to happen in 2020.
Bloomberg will likely fall further behind as more results come in, while Warren will remain relatively flat. It will be difficult for either of them to cross the 15 percent mark statewide, though it’s possible for them to hit that threshold in certain congressional districts.
This story was originally published March 5, 2020 at 5:54 PM with the headline "Can Biden cut into Sanders’ California lead? At least 3.4 million ballots remain uncounted."