Los Angeles Times - 18.03.2020

A8 WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18, 2020 LATIMES.COM

■■■ ELECTION 2020 ■■■

mary hours before the polls
were set to open after the
state’s health director, act-
ing at the behest of Gov.
Mike DeWine, declared a
public health emergency.
Where voting was under-
way, election official worked
to balance safety with busi-
ness as usual.
In Illinois, Cook County
Clerk Karen Yarbrough
urged poll workers to use
painter’s tape to mark the
floor in 6-foot increments so
those in line would stand far
enough apart to avoid
spreading the virus. “This
picture can save lives,” she
said in how-to instructions
posted on Twitter.
Still, there were reports
of missing disinfecting sup-
plies, shuttered voting cen-
ters that were supposed to
be open and other mishaps
across the three states.
The crisis atmosphere
seemed to benefit Biden,
who has based much of his
candidacy on his decades of
Washington experience, in-
cluding eight years in the
White House as vice presi-
dent under Barack Obama.
In all three primaries, voters
overwhelmingly said they
trusted Biden more than
Sanders to handle a major
crisis, according to exit poll
interviews.
Claiming victory Tues-
day night, Biden appeared
solo and struck a somber
tone, devoting the bulk of his
brief remarks to the pan-
demic. He praised those on
the front lines fighting the
virus and, forsaking the usu-
al harsh partisan rhetoric,
called for Americans to pull
together and help one an-
other.
Speaking from his home
in Wilmington, Del., with a
pair of furled American flags
as his backdrop, Biden once
more extended his hand to
supporters of Sanders,
praising their tenacity and
vowing to work on shared in-
terests: expanding the avail-
ability of healthcare, ad-
dressing income inequality,
fighting climate change.
Turning in particular to
younger voters, Sanders’
strongest supporters and
those most resistant to his
own candidacy, Biden said:
“I hear you. I know what’s at
stake. I know what we have
to do. Our goal as a cam-
paign and my goal as a can-
didate for president is to uni-
fy this party, and then to uni-
fy the nation.”
For the second week in a
row, after another dispirit-
ing performance, Sanders
did not address the results
in public. Before the polls
closed, he spoke via
livestream from his cam-
paign office in Washington,
where he, too, focused on the
worsening coronavirus out-
break.
“In this moment of crisis,
it is imperative that we
stand together,” Sanders
said.
Of the day’s political con-
tests, Biden posted the most
important victory in Florida,

a perennial November battleground, where his commanding win surpassed the showing last month in South Carolina that launched his campaign’s resurrection. The outcome was not un- expected. Among other things, Sanders antago- nized the state’s large Cuban population with favorable comments about some of the late dictator Fidel Cas- tro’s programs. Still, Biden’s victory was striking in its magnitude. He rolled up winning margins among black and white voters, men and women, and those with and without col-

lege degrees; he even nar- rowly bested Sanders among the senator’s usual base of self-described “very liberal” voters. (Exit polls conducted by Edison Research showed Latinos making up about a quarter of Florida’s elector- ate, but did not break down the vote between candidates.) Biden staked a similarly broad-based victory in Illi- nois and one nearly as sweeping in Arizona, where, in a breakthrough, he ran even with Sanders among Latino voters, who have been among the senator’s biggest supporters.

Perhaps most encourag- ing for Democrats, turnout in Arizona as well as Florida surpassed 2016 levels, not- withstanding the pandemic, a sign that partisan enthusi- asm — which helped the party take control of the House in 2018 — remains high. Setting aside the primary results, the coronavirus has introduced a sudden ele- ment of uncertainty into the Democratic race, which seemed largely settled after Biden roared back with his South Carolina win on Feb. 29 and a string of Super Tuesday victories March 3. It is not so much math-

ematics, which weigh heavily in Biden’s favor, but rather the mechanics: With tens of millions of American locked down at home, sev- eral states have delayed their upcoming contests, leaving the candidates and their campaigns in an un- precedented limbo. After Tuesday, no voting is scheduled until Puerto Ri- co’s March 29 primary — and officials there are seeking a delay — so it was unclear how the contest would proceed. (Ohio allowed mail balloting to continue, with plans to open its polls and tally the results June 2.) The chairman of the Democratic National Com- mittee, Tom Perez, urged states that had yet to hold primaries to expand their

vote-by-mail programs, ab- sentee balloting and polling station hours to avoid further disruptions. “The right to vote is the foundation of our democracy, and we must do every- thing we can to protect and expand that right instead of bringing our democratic process to a halt,” Perez said in a written statement. The balloting Tuesday was marked by confusion and uncertainties caused by the country’s unprecedent- ed health crisis. Some poll workers failed to show up in Florida, leaving election officials scrambling to accommo- date voters with no place to register their preferences. Makeshift polling places had to be set up in all three states, as nursing homes and other locations that typically serve as polling places were closed off to avoid large gatherings. The two candidates took differing stands on whether the elections should proceed under such extraordinary circumstances — a reflec- tion, perhaps, of Sanders’ desire to prolong the contest and Biden’s eagerness to wrap it up. “We are not doing tradi- tional [get out the vote] out- reach in states holding primary contests today,” Mike Casca, a Sanders spokesman, said after the candidate suggested delaying the election. “We are making clear to voters that we be- lieve going to the polls amid the coronavirus outbreak is a personal decision and we respect whichever choice they make.” The Biden campaign saw no reason for delay. “The American people are resilient and strong,” deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield wrote in an election day memo. “We have maintained our democracy through war and peace, economic downturn and prosperity, and in previous moments of public health crisis.... We are confident that we can meet that same challenge today and continue to uphold the core func- tions and values of our democracy.” Biden entered the day with a considerable lead in the delegate count and pulled even further ahead Tuesday night, 1,147 to 861 for Sanders, according to the Associated Press. While not mathematically insur- mountable, that gap is for- midable, given rules that award delegates on a pro- portional rather than win- ner-take-all basis. To overtake Biden, Sand- ers would have to start winning one landslide victory after another, a reversal of for- tune even more dramatic than Biden’s never-before- seen turnaround.

Times staff writers Michael Finnegan, Melissa Gomez and Melanie Mason contributed to this report.

Biden sweeps 3 more state primaries

ELECTION WORKERShelp Florida voters at a Miami Beach school. Primaries also took place in Arizona and Illinois, where some voters were told to stand 6 feet apart. Ohio’s vote was postponed at the last minute.

Photographs by Chandan KhannaAFP/Getty Images

A VOTERand election worker bump elbows in greeting at a Miami Beach fire station. Florida and Arizona turnout topped 2016 primary levels despite the virus.

[Primaries,from A1]

‘I hear you.

I know what’s

at stake. I know

what we have

to do. Our goal

as a campaign

and my goal as a

candidate for

president is to

unify this party,

and then to unify

the nation.’

— Joe Biden, in remarks directed at Bernie Sanders supporters, especially the younger ones

Democracy in the time of
a global pandemic is a messy
thing — but it still marched
on Tuesday.
Well, mostly marched on.
With Ohio officials deciding
in a dizzying series of last-
minute orders to call off in-
person voting, the focus
turned to the remaining
three states holding con-
tests: Florida, Illinois and
Arizona.
The coronavirus out-
break upended the process
of voting, with volunteers
scheduled to work the polls
not showing up amid con-
cerns about the disease.
But it did not dramati-
cally reshape the Demo-
cratic presidential race, with
former Vice President Joe
Biden remaining the odds-
on favorite to clinch the
nomination.
Here are some key take-
aways from Tuesday’s re-
sults:

Sanders’ climb

grows steeper

After two weeks of gru-
eling losses, Bernie Sanders
needed to significantly shift
the trajectory of this race to
justify his continued candi-
dacy.
He failed to land a knock-
out blow in his one-on-one
debate with Biden on Sun-

day. And the crush of coronavirus news has drowned out much interest in the presidential election. The results from Tues- day’s balloting show the Ver- mont senator didn’t get what he needed. Instead, Biden notched a decisive win in Florida, the biggest delegate prize of the evening, which landed in his win column as soon as all polls closed in the state. Bid- en later won in Illinois; the Associated Press projected his victory about 30 minutes after most polls closed there. He then completed the sweep with a win in Arizona. That means Sanders would need to win about 60% of the remaining delegates to win the nomination, an exceedingly uphill climb given the math and momentum in Biden’s favor.

Virus anxieties favor front-runner “Which candidate would you trust to handle a major crisis?” is the type of question pollsters ask voters all the time, usually as a hypo- thetical exercise. Now, that question has very real implications — and voters appear to be siding with the former vice president. A poll on Tuesday of Flor- ida, Arizona and Illinois vot-

ers found that respondents in all three states picked Biden over Sanders as the leader they’d prefer in a di- saster. It wasn’t even close — the slimmest margin was in Arizona, where voters sided with Biden on that question by 32 percentage points. The poll was conducted for the major television news networks and surveyed voters prior to Tuesday’s vote. There were no in-person interviews at polling places, as are typical in exit polls, be- cause of the coronavirus.

Biden improves his Latino support ... Even as Biden improb- ably turned around his campaign, there was always a glaring gap in his coalition: his soft support among Lat- ino voters. Sanders prioritized winning the support of Lat- ino voters in his campaign strategy, and in the early states it showed. In places like Nevada and Texas, Sanders racked up double- digit leads over Biden among that demographic. But Tuesday’s contests showed a notable improve- ment for Biden on that front. In Florida, analysis by UCLA’s Latino Policy and Politics Institute found that Biden outperformed Sand- ers in heavily Cuban Ameri- can precincts in Miami-

Dade County by 20 points, and racked up similar margins in neighborhoods with large Venezuelan American populations. Biden was probably aided there by lingering anger over Sanders’ comments praising elements of Fidel Castro’s communist revolution in Cuba, even though he denounced the government’s “authoritari- an nature.” Farther west, where fewer Latino voters have a personal connection to Cu- ban politics, Biden also made some improvements. In Arizona, he tied Sanders among Latino voters, according to polling.

... But still has to woo young voters Another weak spot for Biden has remained young voters, and that held true in the most recent contests. Sanders won the support of 66% of voters younger than 45 in Illinois, 71% in Ari- zona and 52% of that group in Florida. Biden, speaking from his Wilmington, Del., home after the bulk of the results rolled in, made a concerted effort to reach out to Sand- ers’ youthful supporters by acknowledging his rival’s ideological influence. “Sen. Sanders and his supporters have brought a

remarkable, passionate tenacity to all of these issues. Together, they have shifted the fundamental conversa- tion in this country,” Biden said. “So let me say, especially to the young voters who have been inspired by Sen. Sanders: I hear you. I know what’s at stake. I know what we have to do.”

Health concerns play out at polls The scenes from the polling places on Tuesday were not a shining example of democracy in action. Some voters in Illinois waited in hours-long lines in cramped spaces, running counter to the social dis- tancing recommended by experts to stop the coronavirus’ spread. In some cases, polling places at nursing homes were moved to alternative locations to protect resi- dents, but the last-minute change made it too late for those voters to request mail- in ballots. The bumpy election day — marked by confusion over closed polling places — could leave some feeling like the results are a flawed glimpse into the preferences of Democratic voters. The Sanders camp de- picted the decision to hold the contests as detrimental to public health. The cam-

paign did not do any tradi- tional get-out-the-vote ef- forts, and a spokesman said going to the polls amid the outbreak was a “personal decision,” hardly the usual language urging for every last vote. In a livestreamed address from Washington, D.C., before most polls closed, Sanders did not make any mention of the night’s contests and focused instead on proposals to com- bat the coronavirus, includ- ing a call for $2,000 in monthly cash payments for every household for the du- ration of the crisis. “We can address this crisis,” Sanders said. “We can minimize the pain. Let us do just that.” The Biden campaign, ea- ger to wrap this primary up, sounded a different note. In a memo released Tuesday before polls closed, Biden’s deputy campaign manager noted the country had held elections during the Civil War, the 1918 flu pandemic and World War II. And, she added, a robust early vote in states like Florida, where nearly 1.1 million ballots were cast before Tuesday, showed that plenty of people got to express their choice. In short, Team Biden’s message was that despite the unusual circumstances, Tuesday’s results are still le- gitimate.

Sanders’ path narrows as Biden tightens his grip

By Melanie Mason

Los Angeles Times - 18.03.2020

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