Former vice president Joe Biden has won the Mississippi and Missouri primaries, continuing his strong showing among black voters in southern states.
In Mississippi alone, Biden won 84 percent of black voters to just 13 percent for Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), according to a CNN exit poll. Among black voters over 60 years old, Biden won a full 96 percent to Sanders’s 3 percent. The state has 36 delegates up for grabs.
Voting on Tuesday occurred in the midst of the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak and fears of a resulting economic downturn. In Missouri, which boasts 68 delegates, about 60 percent of voters said they trust Biden most to handle a major crisis, while 25 percent said they most trusted Sanders. Both Biden and Sanders canceled campaign rallies in Cleveland, Ohio after Governor Mike Devine decared a state of emergency due to the coronavirus.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton beat Sanders in Missouri by less than 0.3 percentage points. Networks were able to call a Biden win in the state relatively quickly, suggesting the former vice president improved on Clinton’s performance against Sanders. And in Mississippi, Biden seems poised for a landslide win.