DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN: Hi, I'm NPR political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben.
KELSEY SNELL: And I'm Kelsey Snell, a congressional
correspondent at NPR.
KURTZLEBEN: And we're here to tell you what happened in
tonight's Democratic nomination contest. Six states held
primaries tonight.
SNELL: We're calling it Big Tuesday as opposed to Super Tuesday.
KURTZLEBEN: It's not quite super. It's — it's up there.
Substantial Tuesday.
And right now, as we talk about this, we only have results
in three states: Michigan, Missouri and Mississippi. We are
awaiting results in Idaho, Washington and North Dakota.
SNELL: And we got three of, we got two of those states really
quickly. We heard almost immediately from Mississippi and
Missouri that Joe Biden had won.
And then we followed up a little bit later finding out that
he had won Michigan as well. So we're here to break down a little
bit of what that win looked like.
KURTZLEBEN: Right. So let's start with those big wins for Joe
Biden, right? Because up until 10 days ago, the South Carolina
primary, he had not won a primary before in his entire political
career, but also, more importantly, in this, in this
presidential run.
SNELL: I mean, think about 10 days we heard people on air, on
our air tonight repeatedly saying "two weeks ago,"
"a few weeks ago..." No, it was just 10 days.
And in that 10 days, a lot changed because we basically
thought that Bernie Sanders was the guy to beat at the beginning
of this process. Coming out of Iowa and New Hampshire, that's
what it looked like.
KURTZLEBEN: Right. And then he had that really strong showing in
Nevada, but then South Carolina just flipped things so quickly.
SNELL: Yeah, and Biden really picked up on that momentum. And
we've been kind of breaking down where the momentum really
stands for him, where he's getting the big wins.
I think we can say pretty definitively that he's making big
wins with women, and in a couple of other places.
KURTZLEBEN: Yes. With black voters. Joe Biden, broadly
speaking, tends to do better with women, tends to do better with
black voters. Bernie Sanders tends to do better with men,
better with white voters.
SNELL: And we're also looking at what his, what Bernie Sanders
supporters are calling a generational divide, in part
because we're seeing major turnout among young voters for
Bernie Sanders. But the problem that he's facing is they're
turning out in big numbers for him, they're just not turning out
in big numbers overall.
So where Biden is strong is in places where, you know, frankly,
people vote more.
KURTZLEBEN: Right. Yeah, so when you look at those voters over 65, Joe
Biden wins them by huge margins, 7 in 10, 8 in 10 depending on the
state, 9 in 10. But then you look at those young voters, yeah,
Bernie Sanders wins them by similarly huge margins. Now, the
problem is that those young voters are not exploding in
turnout this time. In almost every state that has voted or
caucused thus far, the share of the electorate made up of voters
under 30 — who again Sanders does great among — that share has not
gone up. And that's been a real problem for him.
SNELL: You know, another area where we're seeing strength for
Bernie Sanders is among Latino voters.
And one of the things that his supporters keep saying, even
after these losses are mounting, is that if Joe Biden wants to be
the kind of candidate that can win in November, he has to find a
way to speak to the issues that are attracting these young voters
and these Latino voters who are engaged and who are clearly
voting and want to see see their issues reflected.
KURTZLEBEN: Right, yeah, and we will, it will remain to be seen
what happens with Joe Biden on that count, whether he starts
talking more about particular issues like student debt, for
example, whether he choose — were he the nominee — whether he would
choose a running mate who might be younger, or a running mate who
is a woman, or someone of color, that sort of thing.
SNELL: And we're starting to look forward now because we have
a debate coming up. One more debate before the next set of
primaries on Tuesday. And we're also watching, as you know, the
Democratic coalition starts to coalesce around Joe Biden.
It's starting to slowly happen right now. And I think one of the
good indicators of where things are headed is Priorities USA,
they're the big super PAC for Democrats. And Guy Cecil, their
director, came on our air here on NPR and said that they see the
lines pointing directly to Joe Biden, that the math is adding up
to Joe Biden is the nominee, and they're preparing to spend their
$150 million on TV and digital ads to support Joe Biden. That is
a lot of money.
KURTZLEBEN: It very much is. And, you know, along those lines
we saw in Joe Biden's speech tonight, his speech thanking his
supporters. It was also a speech that seemed to be an olive
branch. Reaching out, you know, first of all, thanking all of
those people who have endorsed him, but also, you know, seemed
to be reaching out to Bernie Sanders supporters, saying,
listen, we all have something in common. We all want to defeat
Donald Trump.
SNELL: And speaking of that debate that we already mentioned,
the thing that we're looking forward to is watching these two face
off, head-to-head for the first time without other people on the
stage. So we'll see that coming up this weekend.
KURTZLEBEN: Less talking over each other. All right. Thank you
so much. For more of our coverage, please listen to the
NPR Politics podcast or go to NPR.org or go to your local NPR station.
I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter.
SNELL: And I'm Kelsey Snell, congressional correspondent.
KURTZLEBEN: Thanks so much.