Former 2020 U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Beto O’Rourke endorses former Vice President and Democratic 2020 U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden for president at a campaign event at Gilley’s in Dallas, Texas, U.S., March 2, 2020.
Eric Thayer | Reuters
Joe Biden has picked up another huge Super Tuesday win. According to an NBC News projection, he will claim victory in the Texas Democratic primary.
Sen. Bernie Sanders led Biden in Texas polling averages heading into Super Tuesday. Most of those polls were taken before Biden’s massive South Carolina primary win and a string of prominent Democrats endorsing the former vice president.
Texas will award 228 delegates, second only to California among the 14 states holding primaries on Tuesday. It showed in Democrats’ strategies. Biden will win at least 30 delegates, while Sanders will win at least 23, according to an early projection from NBC.
Sanders’ campaign set up a massive organizing presence in the state, and held a series of rallies there late last month as it tried to mobilize young and Latino voters. Biden held his final rally before Super Tuesday in Dallas with his former rivals Beto O’Rourke and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who endorsed him just after another ex-2020 contender Pete Buttigieg did the same at a restaurant in the area.
Former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who appeared to cut into Biden’s support among older Texas voters, used his billions to blanket the state with television ads. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts outlined her strategy to take on the coronavirus outbreak during a rally in Houston over the weekend.
Along with California, Texas will play a major role in deciding whether Sanders can break away from Biden in the delegate race. As more candidates dropped out of the race and coalesced around Biden, it raised more questions about whether Sanders could rack up the delegate majority needed to win the Democratic nomination outright.
Heading into Super Tuesday, he had a 60 to 53 delegate advantage over Biden.
