If the Democrat’s Presidential race were a boxing match, Bernie Sanders had Joe Biden on the ropes heading into South Carolina. The question was whether he’d bounce off of them to take a blow that’d knock him out or land a punch that’d get him through the round. After a resounding win for Joe Biden in South Carolina, we have our answer. Size matters in this race because it is all about delegates and Biden has an awful lot of work to do to make up ground and not just catch Sanders but most importantly, to pace 50% +1 of the delegates. That’s what’s required to win without a contested convention. There were 54 pledged delegates up for grabs in South Carolina and Biden got 38 while Sanders only got 13 and third is still to be decided.
The great news for Biden wasn’t just the convincing win, but the size of the victory has netted him three-quarters of the pledged delegates available. That’s the kind of win-win he desperately needed in South Carolina. The other bonus for both Biden and Sanders was the lack of any other candidate coming close to the 15% threshold of the vote required to win any delegates in the state. This allowed Biden to pull into a close second behind Sanders overall and for both of them to put a little distance on the others in advance of Super Tuesday.
The pledged delegate race is a race to 1990. That’s the required number of pledged delegates to clinch the nomination without a contested convention. Superdelegates only come into play at a contested convention.
The scorecard after South Carolina looks like this:
- Sanders:58
- Biden:53
- Buttigieg:26
- Warren:8
- Klobuchar:7
The actual leader through the first four states remains a contested convention. Bernie, while leading, is only pacing 38% of the pledged delegates. Factor into the conversation another important dynamic that’s about to hit with Super Tuesday. Bloomberg. We just don’t have any idea what his impact will be in an already tight race in which no one is pacing an outright win. As we wait and watch, it’s crystal clear that you’ll have multiple defections from the race by lessor performers by Wednesday. Already, South Carolina proved to be the end of the line for Tom Steyer and Pete Buttigieg. It’s an indication that internal polling in advance of Super Tuesday shows this to be a two-person to three-person race between Sanders, Biden and potentially Bloomberg.
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