Bernie Sanders Leads in California as Biden Dominates Elsewhere

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders continued along his path to victory in California Wednesday morning as former Vice President Joe Biden surged in the majority of other Super Tuesday states, pushing the Democratic primary into a new phase: A two-way race.

Biden's strength, particularly in southern states with large black populations, came just days after a decisive win in South Carolina that prompted two other center-left candidates — Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg — to drop out and throw their support behind the former vice president. Klobuchar's endorsement in particular seemed to give Biden a key boost in Minnesota.

But Sanders, who has been leading in polls in California for weeks, jumped into a strong lead as soon as the polls closed in the Golden State; he also won Vermont, Utah and Colorado, and was right on Biden's heels in Texas.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who spent half-a-billion dollars of his own money in the past three months, didn't win a single state on Tuesday. Bloomberg dropped out of the race Wednesday morning, saying there was no path for him to win the nomination. He endorsed Biden and pledged to consider using his vast personal fortune to defeat President Trump in November. 

Warren, meanwhile, was reportedly assessing what's next for her campaign with close aides. 

Both Biden and Sanders claimed victory Tuesday night even before the polls had closed in California.

"For those who have been knocked down, counted out, left behind — this is your campaign," Biden told supporters in Los Angeles. "Just a few days ago, the critics and pundits had declared the campaign dead. ... I am here to report we are very much alive, and make no mistake about it: This campaign will send Donald Trump packing."

Sanders struck a similarly upbeat tone in his home state of Vermont.

"Tonight I tell you with absolute confidence that we are gonna win the Democratic nomination, and we are going to defeat the most dangerous president in the history of this country," he said. "We are not only taking on the corporate establishment — we are taking on the political establishment."

Warren's path forward is less clear — though she doesn't seem in any hurry to get out of the race.

Warren supporter and San Francisco Assemblyman David Chiu, who was with the Senator Monday night before in L.A., said that Warren isn't going anywhere.

"She has said repeatedly in recent days that she's in it to stay," Chiu said on KQED late Tuesday. "She is, in many polls, everyone's No. 2 choice. We'll obviously see what happens in the coming weeks and months."

One possible scenario for Warren, Chiu acknowledged, would be the potential for a brokered convention. If no candidate goes into the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee with a majority of delegates, Warren could be a consensus pick, Chiu argued.

"Given how competitive this race is, and given how we still don't have the numbers for the candidates in the race, it is a real possibility we could see a brokered convention," Chiu said.

With California’s vote counting expected to take weeks, she might have some reason to bide her time.

Vote-by-mail ballots in California are still permitted to arrive at election centers through Friday. Between those ballots and the tens of thousands of provisional ballots cast Tuesday, it could take weeks to sort out exactly how many delegates each candidate will actually pick up in California.

Pollster David Binder said one difference this year is that many voters in California and other states waited until the last minute to choose their candidate.

"We saw it all across the country, in which voters were looking at a multitude of candidates that they liked," he said on KQED. "So this time, California was voting a little more toward the end than we've seen in previous elections, because voters took a while to make up their minds."

Even with its 415 delegates, the Golden State isn’t the only big prize on Super Tuesday. With 14 states and one territory going to the polls, a total of 1,357 delegates are up for grabs Tuesday night. California’s 415 delegates are the biggest bounty, but Texas has another 228. North Carolina has 110, and there are another 190 between Virginia and Massachusetts.

To win the nomination at the Democratic National Convention this summer, a candidate needs 1,991 delegates on the first ballot. But the way delegates are awarded isn’t directly proportional to the percentage of votes they get in any state: A candidate must hit a 15% vote threshold to even be eligible for delegates.

In California, delegates are split between the state’s 53 congressional districts (271 delegates) and statewide (144 delegates). So to get any congressional district delegates, a candidate will have to post at least 15% support in that district; or, to be eligible for statewide delegates, they will have to receive 15% of the statewide vote total.

This means that delegate totals will take awhile to sort out — and that could blunt California's impact on the larger Democratic primary, by robbing anyone outside the top one or two candidates of momentum before the next primary contests on March 10.

California traditionally has held its primary in June — making the delegate-rich state among the last to weigh in, and diluting its power to help decide the nominee. So in 2017, former Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill moving up the primary to Super Tuesday — a change supporters hoped would not only make California more relevant in the nomination process, but also give voters here more of a chance to interact with candidates.

In large part, it worked. While candidates have historically used California as a virtual ATM, courting donors then flying to smaller states for events, this year voters around the state have seen more rallies and other campaigning in their backyards. The Central Valley in particular received far more attention than in years past.