“I fully intended to vote for Pete, and then when he dropped out, I was like, OK, Klobuchar seems like a good idea, but then she dropped out, so it helped that they both endorsed Biden,” said Haley Walton, 26, as she went to cast an early-morning ballot in a downtown Dallas courthouse. “That kind of made the decision easier.”
Many voters in Texas faced extraordinarily long waits to cast their ballots. People in Travis County, which is home to Austin, stood by for hours to vote; the two polling precincts at the University of Texas in Austin had waits of over two hours as the polls closed. In Harris County, home to Houston, it was even worse; waits of up to five hours were reported.
Though the difference between Mr. Biden’s and Mr. Sanders’s delegate hauls is likely to be somewhat marginal, the loss in Texas was a huge setback for Mr. Sanders, who outspent Mr. Biden nearly 10-to-1 on ads on television and campaigned heavily in the state. He spent the weekend of the Nevada caucuses crisscrossing Texas and holding rallies before crowds well into the thousands.
“Texas Democrats are generally pragmatic problem-solvers and not dogmatic ideologues,” said Garry Mauro, a former Texas land commissioner who ran for governor in 1998 and who was the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign in Texas in the 2016 election.
Mr. Mauro added that Mr. Sanders had not done enough to ease moderate Democrats’ fears and broaden his appeal to voters like him.
“‘I want to vote for anybody but Trump, but I can’t vote for Bernie’ — that’s a common refrain that I hear from friends of mine,” said Mr. Mauro, who voted for Mr. Biden. “Bernie wasted four years and never expanded his base.”
In the Democratic bastion of Austin, the state’s capital, Mayor Steve Adler had initially endorsed Mr. Buttigieg, but he threw his support behind Mr. Biden after Mr. Buttigieg dropped out of the race.