It is the biggest contest today in the 2020 primary season.
And now, after 7:00 p.m., the polls have closed in two states.
In Virginia, the Associated Press projects that former Vice President Joe Biden is the
winner. And, in Vermont, Senator Bernie Sanders is the projected winner there in his home
state.
We start with how the day unfolded.
At a polling center in Northern Virginia, Anthony and Neia Drayton said the choice today
was clear.
ANTHONY DRAYTON, Virginia Voter: Bernie.
NEIA DRAYTON, Virginia Voter: Yes, definitely Bernie as well. I think he has like the strongest,
like, platform vs. some of the other Democratic candidates. Like, I have always been a Bernie
fan ever since, like, 2016. He didn't get the primary then, but hoping for this time.
JUDY WOODRUFF: More than 500 miles away, Senator Bernie Sanders arrived to cast his vote at
another polling center in his home state of Vermont.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT), Presidential Candidate: To beat Donald Trump, we are going to need
to have the largest voter turnout in the history of this country. We need energy. We need excitement.
I think our campaign is that campaign.
JUDY WOODRUFF: While an energetic Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren greeted supporters
in Cambridge.
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA), Presidential Candidate: It is a moment not just to get
rid of Donald Trump. It is a moment to build the America of our best values.
JUDY WOODRUFF: In all, voters across 14 states cast their primary ballots today, as the U.S.
territory in the Pacific, American Samoa, held caucuses.
Over 1,300 delegates are at play, more than a third of all Democratic delegates to be
chosen this year. North Carolina is the third biggest contest state voting, with 110 delegates
at stake.
Raleigh resident Keith Miller opted for Joe Biden, but only after the former vice president
secured some critical late support.
KEITH MILLER, North Carolina Voter: My original intention was Buttigieg. But with Klobuchar's,
Buttigieg endorsement of Biden, I went back to Biden, who was my first choice many months
ago.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg offered his endorsement
last night, after quitting the race.
Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar soon followed suit, joining Biden at a raucous evening rally
in Dallas.
SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN), Former Presidential Candidate: It is up to us, all of us, to put
our country back together, to heal this country, and then to build something even greater.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Former candidate Beto O'Rourke of Texas also offered his backing. Biden himself
underlined his pitch to voters.
JOSEPH BIDEN (D), Presidential Candidate: The Democrats want a nominee who's a Democrat,
a lifelong Democrat, a proud Democrat, an Obama-Biden Democrat!
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
JUDY WOODRUFF: Seeking to contrast himself with Sanders, a self-styled Democratic socialist,
who invited Klobuchar and Buttigieg supporters to join him.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: So, to all of Amy and Pete's millions of supporters, the door is
open. Come on in!
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
JUDY WOODRUFF: But former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said today that calls for moderates
to consolidate behind Biden wouldn't deter his own campaign.
MICHAEL BLOOMBERG, Presidential Candidate: Have you asked Joe whether he is going to
drop out?
When you ask him that, when you ask him that, then you can call me up. I have no intention
of dropping out. We're in it to win it.
JUDY WOODRUFF: For some in North Carolina, no other candidate is as well-suited to beat
the president in November as Bloomberg, who was on ballots today for the first time.
BARLOW HERGET, North Carolina Voter: Joe Biden is a great guy. I voted for Obama twice and
Biden. But I think we need somebody that can really go toe to toe with Trump. And he can
be just as nasty as Trump. And I think he's got the money to do it.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And now we have a host of "NewsHour" correspondents and public media reporters
spread out in Super Tuesday states across the country, from Texas, to Minnesota, to
North Carolina, Massachusetts, and Virginia, where the polls have just closed.
Former Vice President Joe Biden is the projected winner.
Our Lisa Desjardins has spent the day in Virginia.
And, Lisa, it's an early call, suggesting the vice president, former vice president,
did well there.
You have been looking at these interviews with Virginia voters...
LISA DESJARDINS: That's right.
JUDY WOODRUFF: ... done as they were planning to go vote.
LISA DESJARDINS: That's right, Judy.
And I will tell you, Joe Biden gets his second win of this presidential campaign here in
Virginia, following South Carolina on Saturday, with a broad coalition, it looks like, of
voters.
In particular, Judy, there were some questions about whether Joe Biden could do well outside
of the Deep South of South Carolina. Here tonight in Virginia, by these voters' surveys,
we are told -- here are some numbers.
So, political geeks, you might want to pull out a pen, but they're significant.
Joe Biden, by these numbers, won with white voters in the state of Virginia by 21 points,
and with black voters by 34 points, so Bernie Sanders behind in both of those categories
by well over double digits.
Senator Sanders did win with Latino voters here in this state, according to those surveys,
but that's a smaller population.
The vast -- the majority, 90 percent of the voters in this state are either African-American
or white.
One other note, Judy. I think we have a sense of one big and -- one big favor, one thing
going in Joe Biden's favor tonight. Northern Virginia turnout, as I have said today, seemed
to be very high, perhaps even record.
And, Judy, check this out. In these voter surveys, 55 percent of voters here in Virginia
today said they have a college degree. That is far above the national average. And it
indicates that those voters turned out for Joe Biden.
And that may have been what put him over the top.
JUDY WOODRUFF: It's interesting, Lisa.
And you were telling us, in the last hour, you have been talking to different campaigns.
The Bloomberg, Mike Bloomberg, campaign, after earlier putting some hopes in Virginia, you
said, later on, they were -- they were scaling that back.
LISA DESJARDINS: That's right. This was one of their early hoped states.
They thought they could lead off the night with a win here. But in the last two weeks,
we have seen numbers change dramatically. Talking to voters today -- I talked to one
voter who was originally a New Yorker, said she loved what Mayor Bloomberg did there.
However, she didn't like his tone on the campaign trail. And, overall, voters said they think
Biden -- that I talked to today -- that Biden has a better shot than Bloomberg at beating
President Trump.
That seems to be what this vote may be about. Results still come in. The Bloomberg campaign
still has hopes in states like Tennessee, Oklahoma, some parts of Texas.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Sure.
LISA DESJARDINS: But, for right now, the first win goes to Joe Biden.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And a big win, and, again, the fact that it can be called early significant.
Lisa Desjardins, reporting from Northern Virginia.
So, we turn now to the biggest prize of this night. That's California; 415 delegates are
at stake.
That's where we find Amna Nawaz, joining us from San Francisco.
So, Amna, a big delegate haul, and a lot of strategy on the part of all these campaigns.
AMNA NAWAZ: That's right, Judy.
Tonight, California is voting. It is the big kahuna of all those delegates, 415 total at
stake. California, really, though, is less about who wins or who loses. Senator Sanders
is actually polling really well here statewide. And his campaign tells me they are poised
to do very well.
So, we're going to wait to see how that pans out for him. But California is more about
who can win at the district level. There are basically 53 congressional districts that
are not built and not drawn along partisan lines, but along interest and community lines.
It was a nonpartisan group that did that redistricting, which means every candidate can go into these
specific districts and really make their case and have a chance to pick up delegates. Fifteen
percent is the magic number.
There's a 15 percent threshold all of the candidates have to meet to get any delegates
at all. So what we're really looking at is, if Senator Warren, or Mike Bloomberg, who
has blanketed the state with over $70 million worth of ads, if they can chip away at the
delegate count and start to pick up some of those delegates in those congressional districts.
If they don't meet that threshold, that means dozens of those delegates, Judy, will be going
to other campaigns and other candidates. Still very early here, hours left to vote.
And we know there's a lot of late voters out there in California.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Hours left to vote, Amna.
And we know that, in California, the majority of the vote is coming in by mail, which means
this counting could take a while.
AMNA NAWAZ: It means a lot of work ahead.
It means we may have to extend our hotel stays here.
(LAUGHTER)
AMNA NAWAZ: The 16 million ballots were actually sent out to California voters, and just a
fraction of them -- I have actually been checking the updated results as they come in.
Just about a quarter of those ballots have been returned and accounted for so far. California
voters can either walk up to a polling location, like this one where we are, outside City Hall,
and hand in their ballot, or they can just drop it in the mail today. It just has to
be postmarked by today.
So, by our count, there's 12 million ballots still out there. There could be days ahead
when they're still counting those ballots. A final result may not be until the end of
the week or next week, if not longer.
But we're waiting to see who those voters will break for. Are they the younger voters
who we know have been breaking for Senator Sanders? We don't know. If that happens, then,
obviously, that's good news for him.
Or are they, like a number of voters we have seen in different parts of California, moderate
or independent voters who were just waiting to see if any clear leader in the moderate
lane emerged.
A lot of those folks look to Joe Biden and South Carolina, maybe looking to him tonight
in Virginia with his big win there, and deciding to put their support behind him.
Too early to tell here in California tonight, Judy.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Amna Nawaz will be there as they begin the count. We will see how long
it takes.
Thank you, Amna.
And now to Texas. This is the state with the second largest pool of delegates being chosen
today, 228.
Our own Dan Bush joins me now from Houston.
And, Dan, you have also been getting a look at these surveys of voters -- even though
the polls haven't closed there yet -- surveys of voters interviewed as they were making
up their minds about who to vote for.
DANIEL BUSH: That's right, Judy.
And we see some interesting breakouts here along ideological lines; 18 percent of Democratic
voters said they were very liberal; 18 percent identified as somewhat liberal. That's about
one-third.
The other two-thirds, Judy, identified as very or somewhat conservative or moderate.
So, that reflects still the big challenge for Democrats here in Texas, which is that
this is still a pretty conservative state.
Now, Democrats like to say that they are going to flip the state. We have heard that every
couple of cycles, right? I went back. I looked at the general election results here in Texas.
John McCain won in 2008 by 12. Romney won by 16. Trump won by nine.
So, it's not a clear trend in the Democrats' favors. Publicly, again, they like to say
they're very close. But, privately, several Democratic sources told me they know that
they're not still all that close.
The reason why, again, Judy, the all-important Latino vote. And I just want to put this in
context for a split-second. The census came out with a new set of data just last year
saying that now the state is roughly evenly split between the number of Hispanic residents
and non-Hispanic white residents.
But they predicted that it's going to become majority-minority by 2022, Judy. The issue,
however, is that less than half of the state's Hispanic residents are registered to vote.
Turnout is still lower among Latinos than non-Latinos.
Until that changes, this is still going to be a tough place for Democrats to compete,
in part because of the voter surveys we're seeing tonight, still relatively conservative.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Fascinating to see what Democrats are looking at in the Latino community.
Just quickly, Dan, Texas, of course, the state where, just last night, Joe Biden received
three big endorsements from Pete Buttigieg, from Amy Klobuchar and Beto O'Rourke, a congressman
who ran for president and dropped out.
That -- are you seeing an effect at this point, talking to voters?
DANIEL BUSH: I am, Judy.
They see what's happening. They see those former rivals that you just mentioned coalescing
behind Biden. Several see that as a sign that he is the clear moderate front-runner.
So, yes, Judy, voters do see that as a sign. And people I spoke with at polling precincts
today did bring that up as one of the reasons why they were voting for Biden, if they were
supporting Biden.
JUDY WOODRUFF: All right, Dan Bush, reporting from Houston.
And we will be talking to you throughout tonight.
And now joining me from Minneapolis, Mary Lahammer. She's with Twin Cities PBS.
Mary, of course, that's Minnesota. That's the home of Amy Klobuchar, who just has dropped
out in the last 48 hours, as we just said, endorsed Joe Biden.
What effect is that having, as far as you can tell, on voters in her home state?
MARY LAHAMMER, Twin Cities PBS: It is definitely having an impact.
Just moments ago, I spoke with another Klobuchar voter who, at the last minute, decided to
go to Biden. Now, this voter said he decided to wait, because Minnesota had gone to a caucus
system. Last time, in the caucuses, Sanders won big, 62 percent of the vote here.
This time, we have a presidential primary ballot, and we have had early voting for some
time. And so that ballot still has 15 Democratic names on it. Only five of those 15 are still
in the race.
And Klobuchar is one of those who is not in the race. So, the question is whether her
voters are going to go to Biden and how much Sanders is surging. He held a rally here last
night, very well-attended, again, did very well here four years ago.
So, we're definitely going to watch how that goes forward, also watching Klobuchar's future.
She might not be in the presidential race, but there's a lot of questions whether she
could be in the vice presidential race, whether she could be running for Senate leadership,
if Democrats can take the Senate, maybe majority leader, maybe attorney general.
She was a county attorney here, maybe even Supreme Court. So, I think maybe her national
profile may not be over.
JUDY WOODRUFF: A lot of -- a lot of speculation about that.
One other thing to ask you about, Mary. And that's Mike Bloomberg, his campaign, of course,
running an effort all across the country, putting a lot of money into advertising.
What are you hearing, seeing from voters about him?
MARY LAHAMMER: Yes, I spoke to a number of swing voters today, and asked them all, why
isn't anyone talking about Bloomberg? With Klobuchar out of the race, are they interested
in him?
Every single one of those voters said to me, he's too much like Trump. We don't want another
Trump. We don't want another New York. We don't want another kind of brash -- Minnesotans
are kind of tame in their rhetoric.
There's that phrase Minnesota nice. We kind of like our politicians to behave and be nice
here.
So, Bloomberg just doesn't seem to be getting a lot of traction, even though he spent a
lot of money, has reached out in unique ways, with text messages and phone calls and, as
you said, a lot of advertising.
But it looks like, especially based on the most recent polls, that it was Klobuchar and
Sanders' race. We will see if Biden can get a boost.
JUDY WOODRUFF: All right, Mary Lahammer reporting from Minneapolis, thank you, Mary.
We will be coming back to you.
And I'm sure, as I turn to Stu Rothenberg here in the studio, there are New Yorkers
who would defend their state and say, we have some nice people here too.
Stu, you have been with us on many election nights, primary nights over the years. Look
at these numbers so far, the fact that...
STUART ROTHENBERG, Inside Elections: Yes.
JUDY WOODRUFF: ... the networks, Associated Press able to call Virginia as soon as the
polls closed at 7:00 in the East.
No surprise, they -- the call was made for Bernie Sanders in Vermont, but the fact that
Joe Biden winning in Virginia big and early.
STU ROTHENBERG: I think you're right, Judy.
The early call is a sign of a big win. That creates the sense of momentum. It's only one
state, of course, but it's good news that already the -- kind of the narrative has taken
the first step, I think, which is Biden held onto African-American voters.
And I looked at the voter surveys, and Bernie Sanders did great among younger voters. But
he always does great among younger voters. His problem was, he did poorly, again, among
seniors, and, of course, Joe Biden did well.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And so you were able to get a look at these interviews.
STU ROTHENBERG: Yes.
JUDY WOODRUFF: As we said, Associated Press conducted interviews with voters across the
country...
STU ROTHENBERG: Right.
JUDY WOODRUFF: ... sampling in all 14 of these states to get a sense of why voters were voting
the way they did.
What else are you seeing?
STU ROTHENBERG: Well, we're seeing the patterns hold.
I mean, four years ago, Hillary Clinton won Virginia comfortably. So it's not surprising
that Joe Biden won it. But if you think back a few days ago, a few weeks ago, there was
all this talk about the fractured, divided pragmatist wing of the Democratic Party.
These are not conservative Democrats. These are progressive Democrats who are pragmatic.
And there was all this talk about, well, they would hurt one another and who would get viability?
The early indications are from Virginia -- and it's just very early -- is that there seems
to be a rallying around Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee. Got a long way to go. We got California,
which was not part of Super Tuesday four years ago. It was in June.
We still have Texas, where Bernie Sanders has made major inroads among Latinos. So,
there are lots of questions here.
But what I have seen from Virginia, at least, is good news for Joe Biden.
JUDY WOODRUFF: It's interesting what difference a win can make.
Joe Biden's big 30-some-point win in South Carolina, which he was expected to win, but
this was a big win. It changed the narrative almost immediately.
STU ROTHENBERG: And he's still the guy who finished like fourth and fifth in the early
contests. And he was second in Nevada with just 19 percent or something.
But you're right. The storyline has been rewritten. And my guess is, these results are going to
add to that, but we will wait and see.
JUDY WOODRUFF: We will wait and see.
Tell us quickly, Stu, what else are you looking at tonight? I know we have talked about age
breakdown, gender and so forth. What else are you looking for tonight?
STU ROTHENBERG: Well, we're concerned about delegates.
In February, 155 delegates were chosen. Tonight, over 1,300 delegates will be chosen. That's
a big deal. I know we reported on the delegates in Iowa and South Carolina and Nevada and
the like, but there were just a handful of people, and a handful of delegates were awarded
there.
So, we're looking at states. And we're looking at African-Americans. We're looking at Bloomberg.
Is he viable any place? Is he hurting Joe Biden?
Interestingly, if he does well, Joe Biden can say, well, I'm leading the pragmatists,
but support is being siphoned off. He can also say, Klobuchar and Buttigieg just left...
JUDY WOODRUFF: Buttigieg.
STU ROTHENBERG: ... just left the race, and people had voted early.
So, I'm looking -- looking at all those kinds of things to see if there's momentum.
JUDY WOODRUFF: But, still, we're looking at it -- and we only got a few seconds at this
point, but we're still looking at a divided Democratic Party, with the enthusiastic support
still out there for Bernie Sanders.
We only have a couple of states we have -- we have been -- we have projected so much.
STU ROTHENBERG: He still has resources, and he has terrific grassroots support, absolutely.
There is a race under way.
JUDY WOODRUFF: There's a race under way.
And we haven't even mentioned Elizabeth Warren. We will come back to her. We will come back
to her later on.
So, it is a little after 7:30 in the East, and that means the polls have closed in another
state. That's the state of North Carolina.
And we have news to report.
Five television networks are now projecting that former Vice President Joe Biden is the
projected winner in the state of North Carolina, where, as I said, the polls just closed at
7:30.
Our Yamiche Alcindor, she's there in Raleigh. She's been talking to voters. She joins us
now.
So, Yamiche, you have also had a chance to look at some of these voter surveys. What
are they telling you about how Joe Biden did it?
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: Well, first, this is a big win for Joe Biden.
This is a state that Democrats are looking at to make the argument of electability. About
50 percent of African-Americans broke for Joe Biden. They supported him, and 25 percent
went for Bernie Sanders, while 12 percent went for Michael Bloomberg.
But going on the issues of what's important to voters, I want to put up a graphic for
viewers on the issues that voters were thinking about as they went to the polls. Forty percent
of voters said that health care was their number one topic. Then that was followed by
the economy and jobs and climate change both at 16 percent.
Then we had race relations at 9 percent and gun policy at 7 percent. So, what we see is,
of course, health care being a very big issue. And it seems as though, when voters were thinking
about health care, they thought that Joe Biden and his plan to tweak the Affordable Care
Act, and not to upend the entire health care system with Medicare for all, is what they
wanted.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Interesting, because, health care, of course, has been a huge issue throughout
this campaign.
Of course, Bernie Sanders has made Medicare for all, a single-payer health system, really
the emblem of his campaign. And yet voters in North Carolina looking another way.
And, Yamiche, you can't discount the fact that North Carolina's neighbor to the south
went very heavily, as we have just been discussing, for Joe Biden just days ago.
YAMICHE ALCINDOR: That's right.
What we see for Joe Biden is a campaign that was really struggling before South Carolina
and before North Carolina now. Joe Biden was someone who a lot of voters told me they were
worried about. They said, look, we like Joe Biden, but he doesn't look like he's going
to have the stamina to stay in this race.
And what we have now seen is that African-American voters have delivered at least two big wins
for Joe Biden here in the South, North Carolina and South Carolina. And that's a key constituency
for Democrats.
It's also why we saw other candidates, like Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, have to
end up dropping out, because they couldn't get the traction among black voters that Joe
Biden was able to get.
So, this is, of course, a state that Joe Biden's now going to be able to say, look, African-American
voters are important, they're important to our party, and I'm the one who can pull them
in, the one who can bring them up and make sure that they turn out in November, and are
also going to be important as I win and try to beat President Trump.
So this is a big win for Joe Biden here in this state.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And interesting, too, when you talk about African-American voters, Yamiche,
because we know they will play a big role in the Democratic primary -- are playing a
big role in the Democratic primary in another Super Tuesday state. That's Alabama.
And we will see about Tennessee, where the polls don't close. Alabama, the polls close
at 8:00 Eastern. Tennessee, the polls' closing time has been moved back to 9:00 because of
the terrible weather, the tornadoes.
Yamiche Alcindor, standing by with us from Raleigh, North Carolina, Yamiche, thank you
very much. We're going to be coming back to you throughout the night.
Thank you.