The first round of ‘Big Tuesday’ polls have closed, with Democrat front-runner Joe Biden projected as the victor in the Mississippi and Missouri primaries, according to media reports.
Polls closed at 8pm Eastern Time (midnight GMT) in three states, and early projections favor Biden to win the majority of Mississippi’s 36 delegates and Missouri’s 68. Exit polls showed the former vice president coming out of Mississippi with more than three times the votes of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and leading in Missouri by over 20 points.
Sanders is considered the clear favorite to repeat his 2016 success in North Dakota, where 14 delegates are at stake. Voters in the state were still reporting issues with long waiting times even as the polls closed. With just 14 voting sites for the entire state, some went so far as to cry “voter suppression.”
CNN was experiencing some technical difficulties as anchor Wolf Blitzer tried to call Mississippi for Biden, with Sanders’ face first flashing up on screen before it was replaced with the projected favorite.
A total of 352 delegates are up for grabs in what is known as Big Tuesday, with Democrats in Michigan, Idaho, and Washington also voting.
Also on rt.com Voters face delays, untested new procedures in Michigan, Missouri, Washington, Mississippi, Idaho, and North DakotaHaving won the most delegates in last week’s Super Tuesday contests, Biden is leading Sanders by 670 pledged delegates to the Vermont senator’s 574. While neither is anywhere near the 1,991 needed for an outright victory, the party establishment’s support for Biden all but guarantees that the unpledged ‘superdelegates’ will line up behind him at the convention in Milwaukee, just like they did in 2016 for Hillary Clinton.
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