5 Takeaways from Super Tuesday

After the slow methodical development of the Democratic Primary over the course of the past month or so, the rush, adrenaline – and frankly a little surprise – from the night of Super Tuesday is starting to wear off this Wednesday morning! Although votes are still being tallied and delegates are yet to be finalised at district and state level, here are the key takeaways from last night …

1. Joementum – it’s a real thing folks!

Following his victory in South Carolina on Saturday, there were questions around the ability of the Biden campaign to build on that momentum leading into Super Tuesday given that the former Vice President only had 3 days to campaign, had little ground game or presence in a number of the states and had more limited resources than his two biggest rivals, Bernie Sanders and Mike Bloomberg.

 In those three days, though, a lot happened that worked in Biden’s favour – a spike in online donations, extensive media coverage of the Biden surge, steady, disciplined and mature campaigning both on the ground and through media channels, combined with the very high profile endorsements from former presidential candidates: Beto O’Rourke of Texas, Pete Buttigieg of Indiana and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. Both Buttigieg’s and Klobuchar’s decisions to suspend their respective campaigns and coalesce around Biden as the chosen moderate candidate was especially significant. This doesn’t even cover the other high profile endorsements Biden received from across the Democratic Party, including former Obama Cabinet members. (It is important to note the supreme choreography behind the scenes from the Biden campaign in the securing and roll-out of these endorsements … that’s what I mean by a mature campaign.)

Remember back to what happened in the 2016 Republican Primary campaign – former candidates were unwilling to publicly challenge the populist outsider Donald Trump by endorsing his closest rival. Four years on the Democrats had no such problem – once a clear moderate rival to the populist ‘outsider’ independent Bernie Sanders was realised, the party quickly gathered around Biden.     

Pundits had initially thought that a good night for Biden would be if he swept the southern states. He did much more than that: he was victorious in 9 states to Sanders’ 3 (with California and Maine still to call). Moreover, he won not only in the South, but in New England and the Midwest. While he is likely not to have won California, he will leave with more delegates from the Golden State having significantly over-performed based on pre-voting projections.

Biden had such a good night for a whole host of reasons: support and enthusiasm coming from South Carolina, the moderate lane narrowing, the Bloomberg implosion. But above all, he won because he was able to gather together the most diverse coalition. Looking at the exit polls conducted, Biden was able to secure majority support from African Americans, college and non-college educated, older voters, along with healthy support from Hispanics. In short, he has been able to do what Democrats in 2016 were looking to do: reassemble the Obama coalition. There’s a very simple reason why Biden has been speaking more and more recently about the Obama-Biden Democrats … that’s because, on the showing from last night, the Democratic Party remains Obama’s party.

Now … all this comes with a caveat. Up to South Carolina, Biden was not having a great campaign. For the past week we have seen the ‘happy warrior’ who took on Sarah Palin in 2008 and Paul Ryan in 2012. Biden is going to have to sustain this type and level of campaigning for the rest of the cycle.      

2. Money doesn’t necessarily win you votes …

There is rule in American politics: money is everything. That’s why there are FEC quarterly filings and why they are used as barometers of the health of each campaign, why we speak of building up war chests, the controversial use of high dollar fundraisers versus grassroots donation, and all that’s before you consider the role of Super PACs! Money is the reason that campaigns sometimes can’t be sustained. Money is needed to pay staff, hold events, and more importantly to advertise, buying time in media markets for your adverts. Like I said, money is everything.

Last night, however, money wasn’t everything.

Case Study One: Joe Biden. Biden won the night. But he swept to victory on the momentum of his South Carolina victory and arguably his name recognition. He did not win because he spent big money in these states, spent a huge amount of time there or had a significant or impressive ground game. Yet, he won.

Case Study Two: Mike Bloomberg (to be known in the future as ‘The Bloomberg Presidential Experiment’). Three weeks ago, it was looking so different for Bloomberg – he was rising in the polls on the back of his immense spending on advertisements and building an election infrastructure in the Super Tuesday states, having sat out the first 4 primaries and caucuses. Then three things happened: the debates revealed a different Bloomberg to the ads Americans were watching on their TVs, a candidate who seemed aloof and didn’t speak like a Democrat; Elizabeth Warren went on the attack; and finally, African Americans put their support behind Biden. Bloomberg’s presidential experiment – ignore the early states and rely on hundreds of millions in advertising – failed. In the end, it turns out close on $500m can’t buy you votes.

3. 2020 Elizabeth Warren = 2016 Chris Christie

Elizabeth Warren continued with her run of disappointing primary results – she didn’t win any states and even lost in her home state of Massachusetts. Her future in the race looks uncertain, despite her campaign insisting that she will continue. A path to victory looks almost impossible. If she does decide to suspend her campaign, the question becomes who would she support? Given the clearly testy relationship that has transpired on the campaign trail in recent months, it’s not absolutely certain it would be Sanders.

But she was successful in the last 2 weeks at taking on Mike Bloomberg with incisive and persistent questioning of his record and character. Lauded for her performances on the debate stage, she was not rewarded at the polls. This reminds me of Chris Christie during the 2016 Republican Primary. A popular figure in the party, talked about as a potential presidential candidate, who effectively exposed and took down Marco Rubio. Both Christie and Warren were able to challenge the authenticity of their opponents, but it served to help others in the field; in Christie’s case, Trump and in Warren’s, Biden.

When discussing Warren’s candidacy, there was quite a bit of online chatter about the inability of the liberal/progressive wing of the party to coalesce around a single candidate – namely, Bernie Sanders – effectively complaining that Warren has not suspended her campaign and publicly supported Sanders in the same way as Buttigieg and Klobuchar did for Biden. The premise of this argument is that Warren voters are likely to back Sanders. This kind of argument has to come with a health warning. Polling is clear that Warren’s chief demographic support is among college educated white women who support Warren because of her message and her biography. Their support is not ideologically rooted in the same sense that Sanders’ support among young people can be said to be. In truth, Warren’s chief supporters, in the main, are much more likely to back Joe Biden.      

4. Where now for the Sanders’ Campaign?

Bernie Sanders did not have a poor showing on Tuesday … but he certainly performed well below expectations. He is likely to have won delegate rich California, the biggest prize of the night. What he was hoping for was to come out of Super Tuesday with an insurmountable delegate lead, the result of a strong showing with young people and Hispanics, coupled with the splitting of the moderate vote. That didn’t happen.

While he won with young people, quite simply not enough of them turned out to balance out the surge in support for Biden among older Americans, who did show up. Plus, although he won Hispanic support, Sanders clearly has a problem in gaining traction with African American support. This has a systematic problem that he has clearly not addressed or learned the lessons from 2016. The Sanders’ coalition is based around energising young people and Hispanics. On the evidence so far in this primary season, he has been able to mobilise the Hispanic community, but has not managed to get out sufficient numbers of young people to the polls. This incomplete coalition, on today’s evidence, cannot match the power of the African American support Biden has. The bottom line is that you cannot win the Democratic nomination with the black support – they are the soul of the party. At this stage, Biden has that support. Sanders does not.

Furthermore, the pathway for Sanders is looking slightly narrower this morning. He will likely be leading Biden in terms of delegates once the California results are confirmed. However, Biden’s successes in Texas, Virginia and North Carolina have likely inoculated him from the worst effects of Sanders’ California success. Looking ahead to the rest of the delegate rich states left to vote in the coming weeks, it would seem that Biden could offset any residual California delegate success for Sanders in states like Florida and Georgia.

5. Is it 2016 again?

Lurking in the background of the 2020 race has been 2016. Now, there is a real feeling of déjà vu. The Democratic Party is divided between a moderate, so-called ‘establishment’ candidate and a democratic-socialist independent candidate. Where Clinton has been replaced with Biden, Bernie Sanders remains the constant. He is trying to do what he did unsuccessfully 4 years ago. He uses the same populist rhetoric of breaking down the party he is not even a member of and remaking it in his image, speaking of a revolution that will gather together a new coalition of American voters together. Once again, however, that coalition is not turning out for Sanders, but the coalition of his chief opponent clearly is. Sanders has not been able to either break down his opposition’s coalition or build one of his own that can lead him to victory. Further still, his message has not expanded sufficiently enough beyond those he appealed to 2016. What is particularly noticeable is the factionalism that remains a key component of his message. Where Biden (as well as his former ‘moderate’ opponents and Warren) has made an appeal to unity and building up, Sanders has focused on breaking up the establishment and has increasingly referenced a perception that the system is ‘rigged against’ him.

One emerging issue that we could see in the coming weeks if Biden maintains this level of support is how long does the two horse race drag on for? Sanders was heavily criticised for his presence in the primary against Clinton even when it was clear he would not secure a majority or plurality of delegates. Indeed, commentators and Clinton herself complained this hurt the Democratic Party moving into the general election. Sanders’ reasoning in 2016 was that California – and all its delegates – were at the tail end of the primary season, so there was always the possibility it could upend the final results. The 2020 map is different – California has voted, so the delegate maths is very different. It will be interesting to see in the coming weeks if this 2016 problem raises its head again.

So there is a lot to take away from last night’s results. Above all else though, the night belonged to Joe Biden. His South Carolina comeback was solidified. We move off to Mini-Tuesday next week. They say a week’s a long time in politics… the last 4 days are a case in point!