Former Vice President Joe Biden is projected to win his third state of the Super Tuesday contests with an overwhelming win in Alabama, the Associated Press projects.
Alabama, called for Biden the moment polls closed, will join Virginia and North Carolina in Biden’s first-place column as Biden appears to be sweeping the southern state contests. On Saturday, Biden captured South Carolina by 28 points, resurrecting his sinking campaign and giving new hope to Democrats seeking to thwart Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ momentum. Sanders eclipsed Biden as the field’s front-runner with three straight wins in February.
Biden’s early, large-margin wins in the south, each called soon after voting stopped, will no doubt propel Biden’s campaign in the subsequent stages of the primary as moderate Democrats flock to support Biden to stop the self-described democratic socialist from clinching the nomination.
Biden’s victories also spell bad news for former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who invested heavily in each state Biden captured with no small margin. While Bloomberg flooded the airwaves with millions of dollars worth in television and radio ads in North Carolina and Virginia, Biden remained laser-focused on South Carolina, spending less than half a million in advertising in each of the two states.
Alabama will now offer a plurality of its 52 delegates to Biden, if not all of them, depending whether the other candidates meet the support threshold to score any. Candidates must garner 15 percent statewide to earn at-large delegates or 15 percent in congressional districts to be eligible for district delegates.
To capture the Democratic nomination without a contested convention, the winning candidate must win 1,991 of the 3,979 delegates in the contest. More than a third of the delegates will be decided in Tuesday’s contests.