The Associated Press projected former Vice President Joe Biden will take first-place in the Arkansas Democratic primary, marking a complete sweep of the southern Super Tuesday contests except for Texas, which is still too close to call.
With South Carolina’s 28-point blow-out win on Saturday, Biden has now won each Democratic race in the south to vote so far in the contest, capturing Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama and Oklahoma on Tuesday. Biden currently trails Sanders in Texas with 34 percent of precincts reporting.
Sanders on the other hand has only captured Colorado and his own state of Vermont, raising anxieties among Sanders supporters over his ability to maintain the frontrunner status. After a game-changing 72 hours, a series of prominent Democrats endorsed Biden including several 2020 rivals ending their campaign to get behind the establishment favorite. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has only won the American Samoa Democratic caucus.
On Monday, Biden landed endorsements from Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and former Texas Congressman Robert Francis O’Rourke. Biden also captured endorsements from former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and former U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice.
Biden will now earn a plurality of Arkansas’s 31 delegates. The exact number depends on how well the rest of the narrowing field did in the southern state as candidates can still receive at-large delegates by pulling 15 percent of the statewide vote or district delegates by garnering 15 percent in congressional districts.
The winning candidate must earn 1,991 of the 3,979 delegates in play to avoid a contested convention in Milwaukee this summer. More than a third of the delegates will be decided in Super Tuesday’s primaries and caucuses.
