The Wall Street Journal - 07.03.2020 - 08.03.2020

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. *** Saturday/Sunday, March 7 - 8, 2020 |A

POLITICS

Biden Gets

ABoost

From Trump

The former vice president’s style is

appealing to the Democratic electorate

giving the GOP the White

House and protecting its

Senate majority. Reading the

Tuesday election results, po-

litical analysts found evi-

dence that they also had

changed the Democrats.

With his assertive style and

focus on the “forgotten” men

and women with weakened

economic prospects, “the

president accelerated the mi-

gration of upscale, suburban

moderates into the Democratic

Party and accelerated the mi-

gration of the white, working-

class to the Republican fold,”

said David Wasserman, a po-

litical analyst at the nonparti-

san Cook Political Report.

The result, as seen in Mr.

Biden’s victories in 10 of 14

states on Tuesday, was coun-

terintuitive for a party whose

candidates are pushing poli-

cies to the left of those of

the Obama administration.

When it comes to how voters

view themselves, “the Demo-

cratic Party is less progres-

sive than it was in 2016, not

more,” Mr. Wasserman said.

Exit polls in many states

found a shift away from the

party’s ideological edge, as

more primary voters identi-

fied as moderate or conser-

vative than in 2016, and

fewer called themselves lib-

eral. The share of moderate

and conservative voters rose

by 15 percentage points in

Virginia, 6 points in Massa-

chusetts, by 3 in Tennessee

and Alabama and 2 in

Texas—all states that Mr. Bi-

den won. In addition to feel-

ings about Mr. Trump, the

lack of a competitive GOP

primary may have prompted

some moderate or conserva-

tive voters to participate in

the Democratic primary. If

so, that could suggest that

while the pool of voters in

Democratic primaries has

become more moderate, the

party retains a significant

core of liberal members.

Mr. Trump agrees that

voters are changing affilia-

tion, but he sees movement

to the GOP. “The insanity of

the Democratic Party is why

millions of registered Demo-

crat voters are joining our

movement. They are joining

our great Republican Party,”

the president said at a rally

in South Carolina, where he

criticized Democratic propos-

als to toughen gun regula-

tions, relax immigration laws

and replace private insurance

with Medicare for All.

If patterns hold and some

Republicans remain open to

crossing party lines, the shift

could have big implications

for November. Democrats

could have a larger pool of

voters to appeal to as Mr.

Trump tries to poach voters

from core Democratic groups,

such as African-Americans,

Hispanics and working-class,

white voters, who were once a

pillar of the Democratic Party.

Exit polls from Super

Tuesday and earlier contests

showed that Mr. Sanders re-

tained much of his coalition

from 2016 of young voters

and those calling themselves

“very liberal.” The returns

also showed that he had

added an important new

group: Hispanic voters.

Excluding California due

to its partial results, the Su-

per Tuesday county that

gave Mr. Sanders his largest

vote margin was Saguache

County, Colo., a rural com-

munity with a large Hispanic

population, a poverty rate

above the national average,

and household incomes well

below the national median.

The five counties in which

Mr. Sanders improved most

over his 2016 vote totals

were all heavily Hispanic

counties in Texas, near the

border with Mexico.

Jennifer Allen, a Latina

voter in San Antonio, said

the Democratic Party had

failed her, and she is ready

for Mr. Sanders’s plans for

government to take a more

active role in helping people

navigate the economy.

A hairdresser who owns

her own business, Ms. Allen,

51, said she had never had

health insurance and was

stuck with a $15,000 tab for

a kidney stone two years

ago, which she said was sent

to a collections agency, even

though she had paid off two-

thirds of the bill. His policies

would touch “everything that

would affect my life person-

ally,’’ she said.

Mr. Sanders’s coalition

also has large shares of

younger voters, as in 2016,

when he carried 71% of Dem-

ocratic primary voters under

age 30, exit polls showed. On

Tuesday, three of the five

counties that gave Mr. Sand-

ers his biggest vote share,

outside of California, were

college communities in Colo-

rado and North Carolina.

In Minneapolis, 29-year-

old Esther Park said her par-

ents have high medical debt,

“which Bernie will be plan-

ning on eliminating.” And she

is carrying student debt,

which Mr. Sanders would can-

cel. “That’s been preventing

me from living my life to the

fullest right now,” she said.

In contrast to Mr. Sand-

ers’s coalition, the five coun-

ties that gave Mr. Biden

their biggest margins were

all largely African-American

communities in Virginia and

Alabama, where he took 75%

of the vote. Black voters

have been a core part of his

constituency, like that of Hil-

lary Clinton in the 2016

Democratic primary.

Former Vice President Joe Biden with his wife, Jill Biden, and his sister, Valerie Biden Owens, at a rally on Super Tuesday in Los Angeles.

ALLISON ZAUCHA FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The Democratic primary

race has divided voters into

two clear coalitions, one

backing Sen. Bernie Sanders’s

call for revolutionary change

and one drawn to the quieter

tone and more incremental

policies proposed by former

Vice President Joe Biden.

Super Tuesday supplied

one surprising reason that Mr.

Biden’s coalition, so far, is the

larger one: President Trump,

a force from outside the Dem-

ocratic Party, is helping to

change the Democratic elec-

torate, making it more

friendly to Mr.

Biden’s style of

politics.

The shift in

voting pat-

terns has emerged from exit

polls as well as ballots cast by

nearly 14 million Americans

in 16 Democratic primaries

and three caucuses. Voters

surged to the polls this past

week in the affluent suburbs

outside big cities—among

them Nashville, Houston,

Richmond, Va., and Washing-

ton, D.C.—producing a voter

pool that was more moderate

in its politics than in 2016 and

more supportive of Mr. Biden

than his main opponent.

Mixed in among the Demo-

crats were voters such as Paige

McIntosh of Fairfax County,

Va., a lifelong Republican who

cast the first Democratic pri-

mary ballot of her life. Her

vote was both an embrace of

Mr. Biden and a rejection of

Mr. Trump. “I’m desperate for

someone moderate to vote

for,” said the 48-year-old who

owns a landscaping business.

“I worry about the tenor in

this country, where it’s very,

very divisive.”

The changes Mr. Trump

brought to the Republican

Party have been powerful in

the political marketplace,

BYAARONZITNER

ANDELIZACOLLINS

ELECTION

22

brought the presidential pri-

mary contest back to what it

seemed destined to be at the

outset: A fight between the

liberal Mr. Sanders and the

more moderate Mr. Biden.

More shocking than the

alignment that has emerged

is the blinding speed with

which it crystallized. When

Democrats debated in South

Carolina less than two weeks

ago, seven major candidates

stood on the stage. This

week, five of them—billion-

aire Tom Steyer, Sen. Amy

Klobuchar, former South

Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Butt-

igieg, former New York

Mayor Michael Bloomberg

and, finally, Sen. Elizabeth

Warren—all departed the

race. In sum, in the wake of

the Feb. 29 South Carolina

primary, Democratic candi-

dates quit the race at the

rate of roughly one a day.

On the Republican side,

President Trump has been

watching all this with seem-

ing bemusement, acting al-

most as an election analyst

using Twitter as his platform.

In recent days, his tweets

have shown a clear bent: He

is charging that the Demo-

cratic establishment is trying

to steal the nomination from

the outsider, Mr. Sanders, by

combining forces to stop him.

That line of argument

from the president may re-

flect a desire to sow division

among Democrats, or to see

Mr. Sanders emerge as his

fall opponent, on the theory

he is easiest to beat. Most

likely, the president is hop-

ing to pull away some popu-

list, working-class Sanders

supporters if Mr. Sanders

fails to win the nomination.

Amid the drama, the best

news for Democrats may

have been big turnout in Su-

per Tuesday states. Accord-

ing to data compiled by the

University of Virginia’s Cen-

ter for Politics, Democratic

turnout in 13 of the 14 states

that voted on Super Tuesday

was above four years ago.

A week of

shock waves

has left the

Democratic pri-

mary race right

back where it

started.

As the 2020 election year

dawned, an average of na-

tional polls showed former

Vice President Joe Biden lead-

ing the Democratic primary

field with the support of 28%

of Democrats, while Sen. Ber-

nie Sanders stood in second

place—9 points behind him.

This week, the Democratic

presidential race shook out

as a two-man race, in which

Mr. Biden has captured 36%

of all the primary and caucus

votes cast so far, with Mr.

Sanders in second place—

points behind him.

As the similarity of those

readings suggests, all the

ups and downs, fire and fury,

chaos and drama of the past

two months have merely

BYGERALDF.SEIB

In a Flash, the Democrats’

Race Is Back Where It Began



THIS

WEEK

Exit polls show Bernie Sanders is retaining his support from young voters, while adding Hispanic voters.

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