WASHINGTON — Joe Biden won dominant victories in Florida and Illinois on Tuesday as he marched closer to the Democratic presidential nomination amid coronavirus mayhem.
The former vice president was on course to expand his lead and cross the halfway mark toward the 1,991 delegates needed to clinch the nomination on the first ballot.
The primaries came as the coronavirus outbreak wreaked havoc on American life and sent the economy into a tailspin, though large numbers of votes had already been banked in the early voting period. Arizona polls were set to close later. Ohio postponed its primary at the last minute.
Below are some key takeaways from Florida and Illinois.
Biden looks like the presumptive nominee
In Florida and Illinois, the two biggest prizes on the map Tuesday, Biden decisively won men and women, white voters and non-white voters, college graduates and non-college graduates, liberals and moderates, married and unmarried voters.
“We move closer to securing the Democratic Party’s nomination for president,” Biden said in Wilmington, Delaware. “Senator Sanders and I may disagree on tactics, but we share a common vision.”
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His lopsided margins suggest that many Democrats want the primary to be over. One of them is former Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri.
“The conversation is going to quickly turn to how and when does Bernie Sanders unite the Democratic Party,” McCaskill said on MSNBC. “I think it is time. And Bernie’s going to have plenty of delegates and power to influence the platform, because we all want to come together. So I do think the pressure is going to mount, especially at this time of crisis in this country, for the Democrats to unite behind clearly the voters’ preference.”
Bernie on the brink
One way Sanders knows he’s in trouble? When he’s losing “very liberal” voters in major states, as he did in Florida by a margin of 44 percent to Biden’s 48 percent. He lost “liberal” voters in Illinois by a margin of 44 percent to Biden’s 51 percent.
The defeat in Illinois was particularly disappointing after he came within 2 points of victory there in 2016.
It was difficult to find any positive signs for Sanders, except that he continued to win voters under 45 years old by large margins. His prospects have hinged on young progressives turning out in big numbers to outvote older moderates — but voters under 30, a core Sanders constituency, fell slightly from 2016 levels as a share of the electorate in Illinois and Florida.
Sanders’ hopes of turning things around now would hinge on him delivering massive wins in big upcoming states, though it’s not clear where he could achieve that.
The senator addressed the country on the coronavirus crisis in live-streamed remarks before polls closed. His campaign said he did not plan on speaking about the results Tuesday night.
Warren’s non-endorsement bit Sanders
Elizabeth Warren dropped out soon after Super Tuesday, but her non-endorsement continues to loom over the primaries. An endorsement of Sanders, her ideological simpatico, might have given him a fighting chance with the votes of college-educated white women, who were a core constituency for the Massachusetts senator before she ended her campaign.
Instead he got routed among white women with college degrees, losing them to Biden by 39 points in Florida and by 20 points in Illinois.
Florida voting high despite coronavirus
Due in large part to early voting and mail-in ballots, primary turnout in Florida was projected by NBC News to top two million, eclipsing the 2016 total of 1.7 million.