Super Tuesday

Most Democratic campaign cycles without an incumbent follows a similar pattern: there's Frontrunner and Not Frontrunner.

In 2000, Gore and Bradley.

In 2008, Clinton and Obama.

In 2016, Clinton and Sanders.

2004 was something of a mess, and panicky Dems shortcircuited the process and landed on Kerry before things had really sussed themselves out.

To this point, the Frontrunner role switched from Biden to Sanders, and now it looks like Biden has a chance to solidify his position of being Not Frontrunner.  It's tough to really read the electorate, but while Sanders has a solid 25% of the Democratic party, he has struggled a bit in primaries to break past his 25% plateau, with Nevada being the obvious exception.  Last night kept him below 20%.

Super Tuesday will test whether Biden has turned his campaign around or whether opposition to Sanders will continue to leave him in a position where consistently winning 25-30% of the vote puts him in line to get the nomination.

Biden might have the edge in Alabama, Arkansas, North Carolina, possibly Texas and Virginia.  Sanders obviously has Vermont and Maine, but most importantly, California.

Biden WAY overperformed his polling, and that could be a product of not enough polling of actual primary voters, like older African Americans or a shift to Biden as a bulwark against Sanders.  Pre-election polling had Biden getting between 28 and 44 percent of the vote with the mid to low 30s being common.  He got 48.4% of the vote.  Meanwhile, Buttigieg was between 6-13% in the polls, with most common being around 11%.  He wound up around 8%.  Steyer was between 11 and 16% and finished with 11%. Klobuchar was between 4-6% and finished with 3%.

If the other moderates lose a third of their support to Biden in a place like California, then he could catch Bernie there.

We will know a LOT more come Wednesday.