Super Tuesday: Democrats cast votes on second most important day of 2020 election – as it happened

Chula Vista, California’s mayor endorsed Mike Bloomberg. The city’s assemblywoman picked Elizabeth Warren. What do the voters have to say? The Guardian’s West Coast reporter Mario Koran brings us this dispatch:

On paper, this should be Bernie Sanders country. Sanders, the clear front runner, boasts 42% of the state’s Latino vote. Chula Vista, just a 10-minute trolley ride away from the US-Mexico border, is about 61% Latino; nearly half the city speaks Spanish.

But Warren has made significant inroads here, grabbing the endorsement of Lorena Gonzalez, the high-powered, Latina assemblywoman who represents this district. Last month Gonzalez joined Julian Castro as they stumped for Warren at a brewery not far from Chula Vista.

Chula Vista’s mayor, Mary Salas, appeared to be swayed by neither: Her endorsement went to Mike Bloomberg, adding to a growing list of major US cities whose leaders have embraced the former NYC mayor.

Some of the cities whose mayors have endorsed Bloomberg are also the beneficiaries of hundreds of millions in grant money from Bloomberg Philanthropies — though Bloomberg’s campaign has scoffed at the suggestion that his support is purchased.

A visit to the polls proved that the political view in Chula Vista defies a simple narrative.

“Mike proved he can run a city. Realistically, he can take on Trump,” said 19-year-old Rosalinda Gomez said outside of her Chula Vista polling place.

But her friend, Dafne Ariza, believes Sanders is the better candidate to address the issues that matter most to her.

“Sanders is for everything I care about - immigration reform, LGBTQ rights,” Dafne says.

Meanwhile, Xochitl, 76, said she wants to see better health care and higher wages — a response that tracks with polling that shows Latino voters prioritize health care and wages even ahead of immigration.

As for how Xochitl voted today, “es un secreto”, she said.

You can’t walk by a busy intersection on election day in San Francisco without someone trying to hand you a voter guide from the San Francisco League of Pissed Off Voters, writes The Guardian’s Vivian Ho:

The progressive group that describes itself as “political geeks in a torrid love affair with San Francisco” has been issuing voter guides since 2004 for local, state and national politics. In November, for the first time in the organization’s history, every item the group endorsed won.

But Tuesday’s voter guide had one very prominent item with no position: that of president.

Cynthia Crews-Pollock, who is on the steering committee of the League of Pissed Off Voters, explained that at the endorsement meeting in December, the group was of three separate camps: “One camp of the league said we should sole endorse Bernie,” she said. “One camp said we should endorse Bernie and Warren for progressive unity. Another camp said no, we should not make an endorsement - we should focus on local politics only.”

Since no camp got a majority, the league took the position of no position - which is different than no endorsement. “I think it’s good because progressive voters are not monolithic,” Crews-Pollock said. “Everybody has a different strategy of how to get a progressive candidate in office.”

The position of no position gets tougher, however, with Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar mobilizing their moderate voters behind Joe Biden. But Crews-Pollock is not discouraged. “Forty-six states haven’t voted yet, and the way that Biden wants to spring ahead against Bernie is to have his competition drop out,” she said. “That says that our primary system is broken. So in the primaries, you should vote with your heart.”

The Guardian’s West Coast reporter Vivian Ho brings us this dispatch from San Francisco:

San Francisco is electric on election days. Volunteers are out before the sun rises, waving signs supporting their candidates and passing out voter guides. Voters walk out of polling stations, proudly wearing their red “I voted!” stickers like badges of honor.

“I don’t want to get too overly optimistic because I’ve been a progressive my whole life, but this is the first time that any candidate I’ve voted for has ever had this good of a chance,” said Mokai DePolo, 65, as he balanced two large Bernie Sanders signs against his shoulder.

A few weeks ago, Stacey DePolo, 45, registered the website, berniewon.me – it leads back to this New York Times opinion piece. “Because he already won by shifting the possibility of debate, with the movement he’s created, with our revolution,” she said. “Now we have all the candidates fighting over who’s more progressive, whose Green Deal is better than whose Green Deal. Bernie already won, no matter what happens.”

The mayor of Richmond, Virginia, said Joe Biden’s South Carolina victory was an “earthquake” in the Democratic primary. The Guardian’s senior political reporter Daniel Strauss reports:

“I think in South Carolina there was an earthquake that shook up this race,” said Richmond mayor Levar Stoney. “And it showed that the bedrock of the Democratic, that being African American voters, had a clear choice for the nomination. And his name is Joseph R Biden.”

Stoney’s comments come just days after the South Carolina Democratic primary which Biden won by double digits. Since then Biden has enjoyed a wave of endorsements, including from two moderate rivals in the primary, Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar and former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg, who dropped out and backed him.

The victory and endorsements have acted as a jolt of optimism for Biden’s supporters.

Asked if Stoney thought former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, one of the remaining other more moderate candidates left in the primary, should drop out, the Richmond mayor said it was up to the mayor. But he said supporters curious about Bloomberg would come to Biden now.

“I’m never going to tell anyone to get out of the race,” Stoney said. “That’s for the mayor to choose. But what I recognize that some folks have flirted, dated, dabbled a little with Mike Bloomberg over the last couple months and they’re coming home. They’re coming home to Joe. That is comforting over the last three days, since the Saturday victory in South Carolina. It’s time to stop the flirtation and get serious.”

Bloomberg, pressed on his expectations for Super Tuesday voting, claimed that: “If there’s only three candidates, you can’t do worse than that.

But, of course, he can, Richard Luscombe reports from West Palm Beach:

After a reporter politely reminded him that Elizabeth Warren remained alongside himself, Sanders and Joe Biden, Bloomberg appeared confused. “I didn’t realize she’s still in, is she?” he wondered.

He was also prickly when asked if he’d considered withdrawing from the race after two poor debate performances and tepid polling numbers.

“Have you asked Joe if he is going to drop out?” Bloomberg responded. “When you ask him, then you can call me.”

Next up: Orlando and a rally-the-troops visit to one of 20 field offices statewide that his free-spending Bloomberg campaign hopes to have operational before the primary. Then it was on to the Palm Beach county convention center four miles from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort for the evening rally-cum-watch party.

The former New York mayor is picking up the tab for supporters’ parking and refreshments tonight, dipping further into the $500m war chest he has invested into his campaign from his estimated personal fortune of $55bn.

Minnesota’s top election official apologized Tuesday after a staffer redirected voters to a progressive group’s website when they tried to look up their polling locations

Steve Simon, Minnesota’s secretary of state, said the staffer had a “serious lapse of judgment”. The staffer linked to the website after the secretary of state’s pollfinder website went down on Tuesday. The office planned to go to a non-partisan backup, but the staffer diverted from that plan and linked to a poll location finder on boldprogressives.org. The website belongs to the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which backs Senator Elizabeth Warren. The link was up for 17 minutes, Simon said in a statement.

“The moment this error was discovered, we corrected the link,” Simon, a Democrat, said in a statement. “Anyone who knows me knows that I place the highest possible value on the nonpartisanship of this office, and I deeply regret this error.”

While Biden was inside meeting with supporters, dozens of Bernie Sanders supporters rallied and chanted outside Buttercup Diner

“Bernie has historically been the candidate to fight for the folks that we fight for on a daily basis, sitting across from us in our offices, sitting across from us as we’re doing radical sidewalk therapy,” said Danielle Herrera, an associate therapist at the Harm Reduction Therapy Center. “He’s been working for them since the beginning of his political campaign and we support that.”

Herrera and her two coworkers work near Buttercup Diner, and came out when they heard Biden was going to stop by. They joined the Bernie supporters when they saw them rallying, waving “Not Me, Us” signs in support.

Leticia Brown, another therapist with the Harm Reduction Therapy Center, said as a Bernie supporter, she has some concern about the recent momentum behind Biden with the Buttigieg and Klobuchar endorsements.

“But I’m not worried in the sense that we’ve had folks that we thought were longshots before,” Brown said. “We had Barack Obama in the presidency and I remember when he announced that he was going to run, I thought, this is too soon. This is too early. Bernie, the numbers, the math is behind him. Things are being pulled in ways when it’s not just a fringe movement. People are impacted by all the things that he talks about. For us, if we fall into fear and worry, then we are just going to keep doing the same thing with the same results. Just having hope and believing this can happen needs to be a driving force for people going to the ballots today.”

In Texas, there were long waits and a few glitches, the Guardian’s voting rights reporter Sam Levine writes:

In Dallas, one voter told WFAA he waited for two hours at the Fretz Park branch library. Another voter told the station he was leaving without casting a ballot after waiting an hour in line.

In Travis county, home of Austin, the county clerk said voting had gotten off to a “rocky start” because pollworkers hadn’t shown up for work. One of the reasons they weren’t showing up, the clerk said, was out of concerns over the coronavirus.

In Bexar county, home of San Antonio, there were issues when voting first started because of difficulties connecting to printers at the precinct, said Jacque Callanen, the county election administrator. One polling location had no power, leaving the machines operating on batteries, KTSA reported.

The Guardian’s Los Angeles correspondent Sam Levin has been chatting with voters in Koreatown, where there’s a lot of enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and also some fear about Joe Biden’s recent rise:

“I’ve never felt like I trusted a political candidate before,” said Nat Tereshchenko, a 23 year old who works for a union and voted for Sanders. “Our system just doesn’t care about working-class people. To see the way he’s mobilized people who haven’t voted before means so much ... What he is proposing is not all that radical. I want to push his ideas even further.”

Tereshchenko said they were worried about Biden and frustrated Warren was still in the race: “It makes me scared. If Biden secures the nomination, we will definitely have Trump.”

Nelson Cole, 26, who works for a literary manager and also voted for Sanders, said he was hopeful that Sanders or Warren would win: “Seeing the panic about Bernie shows just how much excitement there is for this new direction. If it’s Bernie or Warren, I think we’ll hear them talk more about the issues and less about the distractions.” He said he was encouraged by the turnout in the voter center: “I’m seeing a lot of young people out here, so I’m hoping for the best.”

Pooja Nair, a 32-year-old lawyer, voted for Warren and was once in her class when the senator was a professor: “She has a path forward. I think it’s narrow, but I don’t think it’s out of the question. The field just narrowed. I believe in the primary, you vote for the candidate you believe in.” She said most of her friends were choosing between Biden and Sanders: “Any Democrat will have a much more pro-science attitude. That’s what we need during a global health crisis.”

In Oxford, England, Bernie Sanders’ brother Larry has cast his absentee ballot ... the Guardian US chief reporter Ed Pilkington writes:

Larry Sanders, a Green Party spokesperson in the UK, has been feeling “the Bernard” today.

The Brooklyn-born politician, 84, who has lived in the UK since the late 1960s, has just participated in the Democrats Abroad primary. He voted in Oxford for his younger brother who he calls Bernard, or Bernie to you and me.

“Bernard’s policies are very mainstream,” he told the Oxford Mail outside the polling station.

Asked whether he’d be tempted to move back to the US were his brother to win in November, he replied: “I’d be tempted to visit a lot”.

Though the Sanders brothers have been separated by the Atlantic for more than 50 years, they have a special bond. At the Democratic National Convention in 2016, Larry cast the delegates vote of Democrats Abroad for his brother, giving a tearful speech about how proud their parents would have been of Bernie’s achievements.

Joe Biden is hoping his success in South Carolina can spill over into North Carolina, the Guardian’s David Smith reports from Charlotte. But the former vice-president is facing a stiff challenge from Bernie Sanders:

David and Lisa Ruch voted for Sanders at a polling place at the Wells Fargo Sense Science Garden in rainy Charlotte on Tuesday.

“I just feel we’re in a place where we need a lot of change,” said Lisa, 59, a real estate agent. “We need someone for the people, not a self-promoting president any more. We need change in health care and Bernie can get it done.”

Lisa had considered Biden but admitted: “I’m not sure about his capability in the long term. There’s something a little off.”

Mike Bloomberg had several signs outside the voting place but Lisa was unimpressed: “I feel like he’s a Republican trying to be a Democrat to win an election. He’s just another Donald Trump buying his way in.”

Her husband David, 66, a therapist and life coach, agreed: “I don’t like him. He is certainly a poster child for money in politics.”

David explained his vote for Sanders: “I’m charged by his connection with the people and how he’s trying to build a people’s movement rather than a corporate agenda. He’s been in government a long time fighting for the little guy.”

In Tennessee, the recent tornadoes have disrupted voting... the Guardian’s Sam Levine reports:

A civil rights group called on officials to extend primary voting after tornadoes significantly damaged the state Tuesday, killing at least 22 people. The letter from the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law came after 21 election sites were closed because of the tornado, according to the Tennessean. The outlet reported voters were being redirected to other locations to cast their ballots. Some polling sites opened an hour later than scheduled.

“Given the devastation and loss of life, we urge you to immediately extend voting in the primaries through at least the end of the week to provide voters a fair opportunity to access the polls,” Kristen Clarke, the president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee, wrote in a letter to Governor Bill Lee, Secretary of State Tre Harnett and Mark Goins, the state coordinator of elections.

On a call with reporters Tuesday, Clarke said the group was considering additional action, including a lawsuit if the officials did not extend voting.

What about Biden and Bloomberg?

Biden’s plan calls for $20bn for the National Housing Trust Fund, and Mike Bloomberg’s plan doesn’t specify an amount. All the candidates have pushed for measures to fight housing discrimination.

Diane Yentel, president of the NLIHC, said the plans were all significant: “The federal government has for decades turned its back on the funding investments needed to keep the lowest-income people affordably housed. We’ve never had a moment like this where we’ve had housing policy and the discussion of the crisis and the solutions as a major part of the presidential campaigns before.”

You can read NLHIC breakdowns of the plans for Biden, Bloomberg, Sanders and Warren.

Elizabeth Warren: $500bn toward affordable housing

Warren’s plan calls for investing $500bn over the next ten years to build, preserve and rehab units that will be affordable to lower-income families. The senator is focused on the supply of housing and recognizes that if “we solve affordability at the middle-income level, it doesn’t trickle down”, said Noelle Porter, director of government affairs at the National Housing Law Project, who reviewed the candidates’ plans. “She’s talking about extremely low-income renters … If we solve deep affordability, it trickles back up.”

The Democrats have all proposed investments in the National Housing Trust Fund, which states currently use to build and rehabilitate affordable housing. Currently, there is roughly $260m available in the fund per year, but the nonpartisan National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) recommends that it is expanded to at least $40bn a year. As senator, Warren pushed legislation that would increase the amount to $45bn. The Sanders campaign’s housing proposal calls for $148bn.

Bernie Sanders: A $2.5tn “housing for all” plan

Sanders’ plan is in some ways the most radical in terms of the scope of proposed funding and the kinds of regulations he is targeting, according to some tenants’ rights activists and supporters of the Vermont senator. Most significantly, he is the only candidate to propose a national rent control standard, meaning an annual cap on rent increases, and is pushing a policy that would prevent landlords from evicting tenants for arbitrary or retaliatory reasons.

It’s a policy that tenant organizers have long pursued at the local level, but has never been pursued by a frontrunner presidential candidate at the federal scale.

“It’s what tenants need now to just have the most basic levels of protection,” said Lacei Amodei, an advocate with the Eviction Defense Collaborative in Hayward, California, who endorsed Sanders. “With soaring rents and so many people being evicted … it is one of the most urgent issues.”

Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal, a Sanders supporter and co-founder of the LA Tenants Union (a group that has not endorsed a candidate), said it was remarkable to have a candidate acknowledge that the profit motives that drive the housing market are not good for the public. National rent control, she said, could mean “incredible relief for tenants … and more stable communities”.

In Oakland, California, Joe Biden was joined by mayor Libby Schaaf and hero pilot Sully Sullenberger at Buttercup Diner. The former vice president ordered a coconut cream pie, per the Guardian’s Vivian Ho.

Biden, riding high off a wave of endorsements from his former 2020 rivals and Democratic politicians across the country, said he’s “feeling really good today”.

The moderate Democrat is divisive in Oakland.

As Sanders supporters rallied outside the diner, Biden met with supporters inside.

Mario also spoke to several Bernie Sanders supporters:

Zaira Martinez, a 24 year-old-student and mental health worker, said the issue she cares most about is healthcare – an answer that tracks with polling which shows health care, not immigrant rights, as the number one priority for Latino voters.

“I really appreciate consistency, and Sanders’ record goes back so many years. He doesn’t bend,” said Martinez.

And it may be the voice of Latinas, not Latinos, that register a bigger impact. Research shows that Latinas consistently vote at higher rates than men.

The Sanders campaign has invested a lot of time and resources to reach Latino voters in this state.

Hello! Maanvi Singh, here taking over from the west coast.

Our reporters are all over California, covering the elections in the most populous US state. In San Diego, near the US-Mexico border, the Guardian’s Mario Koran brings us a first dispatch:

There’s steady foot traffic into the polling place in San Diego’s Barrio Logan neighborhood, a historically Latino neighborhood where murals tell the story of a hard-fought Chicano movement.

As Bernie Sanders is slated to run away with California’s delegates, he’ll look to predominantly Latino communities, where polling shows him as the candidate of choice. But even in historically brown neighborhoods, a quick visit to the polls shows no votes can be taken for granted.

Augustin, 49, a Barrio Logan resident who preferred not to give his last name, said the last four years that Donald Trump has made him a believer.

“I didn’t vote for him in 2016, but he’s done a good job. Against all odds, he’s gotten things done. He’s not always nice, but he says what he believes,” said Augustin, who identifies as Latino.

California governor votes on Super Tuesday

Gavin Newsom’s a fan of Kamala Harris and since the California senator dropped out of the presidential race in early December, it’s been and remains unclear who the governor is backing for the Democratic nomination.

Apparently we’ll have to wait a little longer to find out.

Regardless of what the next few hours bring in the “will she, won’t she” endorse Biden cliffhanger, surely no-one will think of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris today without their minds flicking immediately back to that pivotal moment in the second Democratic debate last June, in Miami, when Harris scored a bullseye against Biden and her campaign took off like a rocket (until she fell to Earth in December).

My politics colleague Lauren Gambino wrote at the time:

It was the most dramatic moment of the evening and came in response to a question about race and policing, when Harris interjected, saying that she had a right to respond as the only black candidate on stage. The California senator and former prosecutor then directed her comments to Biden, denouncing his record on race.

“I do not believe you are a racist,” Harris said, looking directly at the former vice-president. “But,” she continued, “it is personal. And it was actually hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country.”

She accused Biden of supporting policies that would have prevented young minority students like herself from attending school in majority-white districts. She said when he opposed bussing, there was a little black girl in Oakland, California, who was being bussed to a better school.

“There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bussed to school every day,” she said. “And that little girl was me.”

Growing visibly upset, Biden looked away. “That is a mischaracterization of my position across the board. I did not praise racists. That is not true,” he said.

All of the Democrats running for president have pitched substantial climate plans - responding to voters’ increasing concerns about rising temperatures and their widespread effects.

Two in three registered voters (66%) are worried about global warming, according to Yale’s climate change communication program. That includes 84% of liberal Democrats, 72% of moderate/conservative Democrats, and about half of liberal/moderate Republicans, but only a quarter of conservative Republicans.

In one Super Tuesday state, Texas, two-thirds of voters want to develop more renewable energy.

But presidential contenders, particularly the more moderate ones, are cautiously navigating climate politics.

Both Joe Biden and Mike Bloomberg have refused to commit to banning fracking, which will likely give them an edge in oil and gas states.

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren would ban the method of extracting oil and gas, which would drastically reduce drilling in the US. Banning fracking, however, would require action from Congress, which seems politically untenable.

Supporters of Biden and Bloomberg say they are focused on the actions they can achieve with executive authority.

The candidates also split over nuclear power - which provides more than half of zero-carbon electricity in the US. Many experts argue that climate plans that don’t include nuclear aren’t serious.

Sanders would prohibit the construction of new nuclear plants and stop renewing licenses for existing ones.

Warren said she opposed new nuclear plants and would phase out existing ones, but she has since backtracked. California has already shut down its nuclear plants.

It was a scene that was hard to imagine just one week ago. Joe Biden, 77, and until Sunday his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination Pete Buttigieg, 38, appeared together before a tiny crowd in the Chicken Scratch restaurant in Dallas, Texas, where Buttigieg endorsed the former vice president, Reuters writes.

Fighting back tears, Biden compared the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, to his late son Beau, saying it was the highest compliment he could offer any person.

Having ditched his own bid for the nomination, Buttigieg, who had spent months calling for generational change, said Biden would “bring back dignity to the White House.”

Buttigieg’s endorsement was the most eye-catching among over 100 that flooded in for Biden from mostly moderate Democrats after his dominant South Carolina win on Saturday, narrowly preceded by Amy Klobuchar’s endorsement and followed by former candidate Beto O’Rourke’s last night.

Biden’s comeback in South Carolina, after poor showings in other early voting states, was exactly the kind of a victory that Democratic Party officials, alarmed that front-runner Bernie Sanders is far too liberal to beat Trump, had been craving, according to more than two dozen people who either gave their endorsements or were involved behind the scenes.

“I hadn’t planned on endorsing anybody, but then I started getting worried that Bernie Sanders would become the nominee,” said former Senator Barbara Boxer of California, a longtime Senate colleague of both Biden and Sanders.

On the eve of the South Carolina primary, she called longtime Biden aide Steve Ricchetti, telling him she would endorse Biden if he won the race.

People both inside and outside the Biden campaign said that while the effort to garner endorsements involved calls from Biden aides asking for help, most decided on their own.

“People woke up and got a sense of urgency,” said one person close to Biden.

Buttigieg’s endorsement, in particular, surprised Biden.

Biden did not ask Buttigieg for his endorsement nor did the former mayor say he was going to announce support, Biden said at the Texas chicken restaurant event.

The event, which lasted only a few minutes and involved a small crowd of press, campaign supporters and people who just happened to be at the restaurant, was hastily arranged to accommodate a quick, last-minute announcement, said one person familiar with the matter.

Virginia is the fourth-largest prize on Super Tuesday, awarding 99 pledged delegates, ranking behind California (415), Texas (228) and North Carolina (110), the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports.

It’s a huge day in this increasingly-blue swing state and will be a useful early indicator of how things are going for the leading candidates Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg and Elizabeth Warren when polls close at 7pm ET. Meanwhile, WDBJ7, the CBS-affiliated television station licensed to Roanoke, Va, reports:

Virginia Tech Professor and WDBJ7 Political Analyst, Bob Denton, said Virginia’s primary will likely come down to a three-way race among Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Mike Bloomberg.

Elizabeth Warren remains in the race, but in the last 48 hours, Tom Steyer, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar have ended their campaigns.

Biden, Denton said, has picked up momentum following a decisive win in South Carolina.

“In a matter of one month he’s gone from a distant third to first in the most recent poll, by three or four points,” Denton said, “so it makes him extremely viable.”

Denton said Sanders has an opportunity to make a statement.

“And if he has a very strong night,” Denton said, “that will certainly send an interesting message indeed for the Democrats.”

And Bloomberg must prove himself in Virginia, after focusing his attention and millions in campaign spending on Super Tuesday, WDBJ7 reports from Blacksburg, Va, the home of Virginia Tech university.

Virginia congresswoman and moderate Democrat Abigail Spanberger, part of the Blue Wave in the 2018 midterms, who flipped her red district in her first ever run for office, mourns the departure of Klobuchar and urges her fellow Virginians to get out and vote in this key primary today.

Abby to Amy:

Rocky in the Rockies?

Will Joe Biden pull back from way behind in Colorado primary voting today and, if making significant progress, how many delegates will he pull in?

Two Colorado polls last week gave Sanders leads of 12 and 14 percentage points over the rest of the field in the purple state, the Denver Post reports.

Those were pre-Biden South Carolina primary landslide, obviously, but the indications had been that Elizabeth Warren could come in second behind Sanders. So will the Biden phoenix-like rise of late make a difference tonight?

State watchers expect a strong voter turn-out in Colorado today and a lot of undecided voters making late decisions - perhaps wise in light of the developments of the last 48 hours.

It’s definitely Bernie’s to lose.

Bernie just voted

He’s in his home state of Vermont today and will be there tonight as the results come rolling in. It could be a long night, especially waiting for a result in California, where the polls don’t close until 8pm local time. Will Bernie Sanders follow his strong performances in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada voting with a good show east and west? Will it be enough to hold off Joe Biden?

If he beats Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts tonight it could be a harbinger for where Warren’s campaign is going to end up. But will it mean the start of a sweep for Sanders, or will Biden capitalize strongly on his South Carolina win - leaving California as a late-night cliffhanger?

The Boston Globe has a handy “everything you need to know on Super Tuesday in Massachusetts” piece, here. The Globe has endorsed Warren for the Democratic nomination.

Barbra: “We can’t go on like this”

We HAVE to pivot now. To Barbra Streisand. One of Hollywood’s most loyal Democratic donors over the years, the 77-year-old’s written a searing op-ed for Variety, so stop what you’re doing and check this out before you hit the polling station, if you’re in a Super Tuesday voting state.

She says she fears the country “could be extinguished” if Donald Trump wins reelection in November.

“Every morning I wake up, holding my breath while I turn on my phone to see the latest news. I think to myself, ‘It can’t be worse than yesterday.’ But when the news loads, I think, ‘Ohhhhh, yes, it is worse.

Since 2016, we’ve been dragged down into the mud of Trump’s swamp. We can’t go on like this. It’s too dangerous.”

“Every day, he takes another swipe at the pillars of our democracy, but we cannot allow him to irrevocably change this country,” Streisand writes. “The ‘beacon of hope’ that is America could be extinguished if he’s given another four years.”

Warren still on the hunt

Elizabeth Warren will be deep in a rabbit hole tonight if she doesn’t make a surprisingly good showing in Super Tuesday voting.

She badly needs to win, at the very least, her home state of Massachusetts, which she represents in the Senate - but there’s a danger of Bernie Sanders winning there tonight.

If she doesn’t win Mass or Oklahoma, where she grew up, the landscape will be bleak, with a path to the nomination (contested party convention...?) very had to see. She gives fantastic performances on the trail and the enthusiasm mask has never slipped, but this has been a devastating few months for Warren’s campaign - especially as she is arguably the most qualified of anyone for the White House (including the incumbent).

Warren’s busy on a Twitter fundraising streak this morning, as if oblivious to the fact that Buttigieg and Klobuchar have abruptly dropped out and moved quickly to heal division in the Democratic ranks, despite beating her in the early contests.

And progressive rival Bernie Sanders has mountains more support at this point, based on most recent polls, in states from New England to California via Texas.

Does the candidate with “a plan for that” have a plan for tomorrow morning if she tanks tonight?

Hello all, Joanna Walters here: I’m taking over the blog in New York now, from my esteemed colleague in London, Martin Belam, and will be you walking with you through this Super Tuesday morning before passing the baton on to others for an exciting afternoon and then a dramatic night of results. Stay tuned here for all the action.

Bloomberg’s D-Day

Former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg appears on primary voting ballots for the first time today and it’s make or break for him. After Biden’s overnight surge of support from his South Carolina result, Bloomberg’s billions could end up counting for very little in his personal race.

He’s spent a record-breaking $566 million of his own money so far on his gamble of launching a campaign but not actually competing in a primary or caucus until today.

And of that, a whopping $215 million has been spent in the 14 Super Tuesday states where primary voters go to the polls today to pick their Democratic party nominee to face Donald Trump in November.

Oddly, Bloomberg’s spending the day in Florida, which doesn’t vote until March 17, at events in Orlando and Miami before watching the results at an event in West Palm Beach, coincidentally the location of Trump’s private resort club Mar-a-Lago and a billionaire snowbird playground.

And here’s Trump’s generous take on his rival.

Donald Trump is inevitably having his say on the Democrat’s Super Tuesday primaries from the comfort of his phone. He’s just been tweeting that voters in Texas and Oklahoma should shun Mike Bloomberg, as he will have a negative impact on their fossil fuel-based energy industries.

Trump has gone on to describe Bloomberg as a “chocker”, which is rapidly becoming the covfefe of election season.

Talking of Mike Bloomberg and Texas, a few hours ago Time published this in-depth look at his campaign from Molly Ball in Houston.

On 3 March, Bloomberg’s big bet will be called. His name will be on the primary ballot for the first time. Sanders holds a delegate lead over a surging Joe Biden, and Bloomberg’s debate flops have some Democrats accusing him of being an obstacle rather than savior, contributing to the clog of moderate contenders that’s preventing Democrats from consolidating around a non-Sanders candidate. Unlike when he was mayor, Bloomberg can’t order those in the path of his blitz to evacuate—not that he hasn’t tried.

Read it here - Time: Mike Bloomberg wants to fix America. But can he fix the Democrats?

Here’s a few things worth a read over your coffee this morning:

Jim Newell in Slate suggesting that this Super Tuesday, anything could happen, and all he is willing to predict is that:

Sanders will win a whole bunch of delegates, Biden will win a whole bunch of delegates, and Michael Bloomberg and Elizabeth Warren will win some number of delegates. Dead candidates, like Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, might also win some delegates based on either early voting tallies or people who don’t watch the news. Tulsi Gabbard, who is still in the race, will probably not win any delegates. The rest, though, is all unknown.

Read it here - Slate: After Mayhem Monday, it’s Super Tuesday!

Over at The Hill, Niall Stanage has a breakdown of what he says each candidate needs to do. Key takeaways - it is vital for Biden to do better than Bloomberg, Warren must win her home state of Massachusetts, and he didn’t bother working out what Tulsi Gabbard needed. And Sanders?

One key question for Sanders is how he does in Southern states. Alabama, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee all vote on Tuesday. Black voters will be crucial to the outcome in those states, and Sanders underperformed with African Americans in South Carolina. His skeptics will be scrutinizing the Super Tuesday results for signs of further weakness in that regard.

Read it here - The Hill: What each candidate needs to do

Away from the results of the election and more about the mechanics of elections temselves, Kim Zetter at Politico has been looking at the business of states investing in their own election tech.

Los Angeles County spent nine years working on a government-designed and owned voting system with the goal of setting a new standard for security, reliability and transparency. Instead, millions of county voters on Super Tuesday will cast ballots on a system in which numerous security flaws were found.

Read it here - Politico: Los Angeles County’s risky voting experiment

It’s not just in the 14 Super Tuesday states that Democrats are casting their votes today. 3 March also marks the opening of the Democrats Abroad primary. There are thirteen pledged delegates at stake. The primary runs until 10 March.

To vote, you have to be a US citizen residing abroad, be 18 as of 3 November 2020 and be a member of Democrats Abroad.

One of the earliest voting stations to open was in Bangkok, Thailand, where the primary is taking place amid the coronavirus outbreak. There have been 43 cases and one death in the country. Some voters have been casting their ballots wearing face masks.

Also overnight on the coronavirus outbreak, Donald Trump was flexing his muscles again over interest rates at Federal Reserve - a long-term concern of his.

Responding to news that Australia’s central bank has cut interest rates to a record low due to the “significant effect” of the coronavirus outbreak on the Australian economy, Trump blasted the Fed and Jerome Powell again for their interest rate position.

One story that will not go away during the whole of the 2020 election cycle is that of vote security. Associated Press have been looking at some of the measures in place in the first big test of the system since the 2018 midterms. And there’s a new factor at play - coronavirus.

In 2016, the Russians weaponized social media to sow discord among Americans, scanned state and local election systems for cyber vulnerabilities and deployed the targeted release of stolen campaign emails and documents. US intelligence chiefs have warned that foreign interference remains a threat. And the recent outbreak of a new virus could present a bad actor with an opening to spread false information to keep voters away from the polls. We’ve already seen misinformation about the virus on social media go, well, viral.

One California county has sought to address concerns over the coronavirus by sending bottles of hand sanitizer to polling places and asking poll workers to post fliers from the public health department on how to avoid spreading the virus.

Jesse Salinas, the chief elections official in Yolo County, California, told Associated Press that a few poll workers have backed out over concerns but most understand the threat is relatively low. The county had no reported cases as of Monday morning.

“We are hoping people remain calm and still participate in the election process,” Salinas said.

Unlike the fiasco of the Democrat counting at the Iowa caucuses, it will be state and local election officials will be administering Tuesday’s elections.

“Texas voters can rest assured ... that our office and those of local and county elections officials are committed to working hand in hand to ensure smooth elections as well as the integrity of our electoral process,” said Stephen Chang, spokesman for the Texas Secretary of State’s Office.

States vary considerably in their use of technology to run elections. Some utilize computerized voter lists known as electronic pollbooks to check in voters, while others rely on paper. Voters in a few places will be using new electronic voting machines that produce a paper record of voter selections while some voters in Texas, Tennessee and Oklahoma will be using older ones considered vulnerable by election security experts.

In California - widely seen as the most crucial Democrat primary to win - a new publicly owned computerized voting system the first of its kind in the nation will face a crucial test in Los Angeles County, the nation’s largest elections jurisdiction with 5.4 million registered voters.

The new system won conditional state approval despite serious security and technical issues, with the county ordered to offer all voters the option of using hand-marked paper ballots.

An estimated 63 percent of voters were already expected to vote by mail using hand-marked paper ballots. Such ballots are considered the most reliable by election security experts because paper can’t be hacked or altered by programming errors.

If you’d like an indication of where votes might go across the states voting today, then NBC News have got a state-by-state look at who’s leading in the polls.

They give Sanders a clear lead in California, the state where most delegates are up for grabs. Sanders has a tighter six point lead over Biden in Texas, which has 228 pledged delegates on offer.

A word of caution though. Some polling has been done in some states after Biden’s South Carolina victory, but a lot of these figures are going to be a bit stale, as they don’t reflect that Biden win, or that Klobuchar and Buttigieg have dropped. The final destination of the votes from their supporters is going to be one of the things that makes today so intriguing.

Read it here - NBC News: Super Tuesday polls state-by-state look at who’s leading

Good morning. And then there were four. Well, four plus Tulsi Gabbard.

Super Tuesday always looked like being the day that the Democratic nomination field narrowed - but we expected it to be after the results, not in the two days beforehand. The withdrawal of first Pete Buttigieg and then Amy Klobuchar from the race leaves today’s election tantalisingly poised.

For Bernie Sanders, it is about showing that he can keep on picking up those pledged delegates and keep his nose ahead in the race. For Joe Biden, with key moderates now out of the running and backing him, it is a huge opportunity to make himself the clear single leading opponent to Sanders.

Elizabeth Warren needs to do well enough that it seems worthwhile her continuing, although her strategy appears to be just hanging on all the way to the convention, and see what shakes out there.

And Mike Bloomberg needs to see if he can turn his massive ad spend into votes. It is the first time he has been on the ballot paper.

14 states across the country – Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia – as well as one US territory (American Samoa) and Democrats abroad will cast their votes, allocating around a third of the delegates candidates need to get the nod to run against Trump.

Here’s our guide to the night:

Away from the Democratic race, it will be another important day for the Trump administration in its attempts to cope with the coronavirus outbreak, which has now claimed six lives in Washington state.

Donald Trump is visiting a viral pathogenesis laboratory at the National Institutes of Health Vaccine Research Center in Bethesda, Maryland. He will be taking part in a roundtable briefing. There is also expected to be a press briefing by members of the Coronavirus Task Force later this afternoon.