The appointment is preceded by the departure of Buttigieg, the youngest of the candidates, from the Democratic Democrat
Democratic candidates for the White House face an almost definitive screening on Tuesday with the celebration of primaries in fourteen states and a territory of the country (American Samoa), where a third of the delegates who will make a final decision in the July National Democratic Convention to elect the president’s rival, Donald Trump, in the November elections. Two names emerge as favorites: former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders
To get an idea of the importance of this day: adding all the polling places, a total of 1,357 delegates from the 1,991 that guarantee the final nomination at the convention are in play, where only a simple majority is needed to win.
In any case, no one will be guaranteed the final nomination after this ‘super Tuesday’, whatever happens in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia and American Samoa.
Given the size of the vote, the electoral board has asked for patience in the face of the final results, which could be delayed for days. “If we were to count at the time the polls closed, we would be leaving voters without rights, that simple,” explains Kathleen Hale, director of the Research and Practice Institute of the Electoral Administration of the University, to NPR from Auburn.
“And if we expect to have a count within four or five hours after the polls close, we need a much more sophisticated and, frankly, expensive infrastructure to make it even remotely possible,” he explained.
In addition, there are many other unknowns to clear. The dome of the party is attentive to what is considered a general test on the electorate, for the ideological variety of the population of the states at stake, or the incorporation at the last minute of the magnate and ex-mayor of New York Mike Bloomberg, absent from The first votes.
But it is Biden and Sanders who seem doomed to the last confrontation. The first, representative of the elites of the party, protected in his image of statesman. The second, practically a “renegade” self-proclaimed as a social democrat, and strengthened by the impact of its aggressive bases on social networks.
FACE TO FACE
Since the beginning of the primaries in Iowa, Sanders has been cornering Biden to force the former vice president to grab the momentous victory won in South Carolina this past Saturday to keep his victory options.
Sanders, meanwhile, rides the wave of the electorate sector that has opted to embrace the prevailing polarization in American politics instead of choosing the moderation that Biden represents, in whom they perceive the same systemic features they saw in Hillary Clinton, defeated by Trump does Almost four years.
Behind them, the senator for Masachussetts, Elizabeth Warren; Bloomberg, and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klouchbar, will fight to grab the 15 percent vote guaranteed by at least one delegate in each state where the supermars’ primaries are held.
Of all of them, Warren leaves with the best options to continue fighting until the end, while this Sunday the former mayor of South Bend, Pete Buttigieg, threw in the towel and announced his resignation to aspire to reach the White House. His departure leaves the game without the youngest male candidate.
CALIFORNIA Y TEXAS, THE KEY
Two states stand out above all: California, which provides 494 delegates, and Texas, which provides 261. Sanders, according to the latest surveys of the CBS / YouGov network published this Sunday, would win in both with an approximate 30 percent of the votes (The number of delegates assigned is proportional to the percentage of vote). Biden is second in both states, with 19 and 26 percent respectively.
The survey highlights the strengths of Sanders and Biden. The first, especially popular among young people, Hispanics and the working class. The second is the favorite of black voters who raised him in South Carolina: six out of ten cast their vote in their favor.
While these first votes pale against Tuesday’s – so far, Sanders has only 58 delegates for the 50 of Biden – the compilation of the polls so far maintains the favoritism of the veteran senator.
According to the data collected by RealClearPolitics from dozens of polls, Sanders is the preferred candidate of respondents with ten points of difference over Biden, with Bloomberg, Warren and Buttigieg tied at some distance.
THE DAY AFTER: DONALD TRUMP
Although the ‘super Tuesday’ clears the picture, the Democratic Party will continue to face an existential crisis after the voting chain: which candidate is needed to defeat Donald Trump. Over the past few months, several polls suggest that several of the Democratic candidates would defeat the tycoon in the final elections.
However, no party leader trusts in the least of the polls after the Clinton debacle in 2016. Trump, for better and for worse, is an established figure and rarely has the defeat of a president in a revalidated to the position. Trump has been undermining contenders based on nicknames and insults on social networks and his 30 percent voter base remains irreducible, with the full backing of the entire Republican Party against all odds.
The pragmatic option would be to choose a candidate capable of defeating him safely in two or three key states to guarantee victory in the polling station. Biden could be that candidate, but the Democrats are far from being a united front.
The new youth of the party have grown tired of what they consider a monolithic dome, far from the new generations of Americans, and figures like Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez have already declared their support for Sanders, while they have warned that they will protest if they perceive irregularities in the final nomination process. But if the senator wins for Vermont, – ‘Bernie the Chalado’, as President Trump describes him – many Democratic voters could end up frightened by his radical image.
