Former Vice President Joe Biden has gained Florida’s Democratic main, within the actual reverse of a political shock. Even earlier than Biden j
Former Vice President Joe Biden has gained Florida’s Democratic main, within the actual reverse of a political shock.
Even earlier than Biden jumped out to what seems to be a dominating nationwide polling lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders, the state appeared set to be one of many friendliest contests for him.
Florida has a higher-than-average African American inhabitants, which has tended to be the loss of life knell for Sanders throughout each the 2016 and 2020 cycles. For instance, on this 12 months’s Mississippi main, the place black voters made up about 70 percent of the electorate, Biden gained 81 percent of the vote.
And Sanders confronted extra demographic challenges within the state: Florida additionally has a big Cuban American inhabitants that’s deeply skeptical of Sanders’s perceived softness on the Latin American left and a big Jewish population, a few of whom could also be skeptical of his views on Israel. Sanders himself is Jewish, however that has introduced him primarily no advantage of the doubt from Israel hawks.
The icing on the cake is that Florida has one of many oldest populations of any state, and Sanders famously does poorly with older voters — on Super Tuesday, as an example, practically half of all voters older than 65 voted for Biden; solely 15 p.c of these voters went for Sanders.
In brief, Florida was a promising state for Biden, and it voted at a time when he’s transferring up in nationwide polls. Current surveys had him up by anyplace from 29 to 44 percentage points relying on which pollster you requested, so the true query has been about precisely how huge his delegate haul could be.
Florida’s 219 pledged delegates make it the fourth-largest prize within the Democratic main calendar (New York has a smaller inhabitants however extra delegates as a result of bluer states get additional weight within the course of). A giant win right here is a large alternative for Biden to increase his delegate lead and to attempt to put Sanders out of competition.