Fourteen states will hold primary elections in today’s Super Tuesday contests, including the two that award the most delegates, California and Texas, as well as a number of critical general-election swing states. Here’s a look at six of the most interesting battlegrounds.
California
In 2016, California proved to be something of a firewall for Hillary Clinton, who beat Bernie Sanders with 53 percent of the vote to his 46 percent. That year, the state voted in June, when the primary race was all but over.
This year, voters go to the polls as the race is in flux, and it is Mr. Sanders who is hoping that California will prove to be his own firewall. Recent polls have consistently shown him with a comfortable lead over his rivals, fueled in part by strong support from young Latinos. But many voters told pollsters they were waiting for results in early states before deciding who to vote for, and this week’s batch of prominent endorsements for Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. could lift him in the state, which is home to many moderate suburban voters.
No other candidate has come close to spending as much money as Michael R. Bloomberg has poured into the state, blanketing the airwaves for weeks on both English and Spanish television stations. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, whom some polls showed in second place among California voters, made a final push in the state Monday, in an attempt to garner enough support to keep her in the race.
Inequality has long been the most pressing issue in the state, and one Mr. Sanders frequently tapped into. Now, the question is whether that message will give him a majority of the state’s 415 pledged delegates, Super Tuesday’s biggest prize. Polls suggested that just two or three of the candidates were likely to win enough votes to receive any delegates.
The primary will also be an early indicator of the strength of Democrats who flipped Republican congressional districts in 2018, particularly in Orange County and the Central Valley. Several Republicans are running in rematches against Democrats, including Darrell Issa, David Valadao and Young Kim.
Texas
By Matt Stevens and
With its enormous trove of delegates, California may be drawing the most attention in the run-up to Super Tuesday. But what happens in Texas could also prove extremely important to the state of the race.
At stake in Texas are 228 delegates — the third-largest number in any state and the second largest on Super Tuesday. And polling suggests the race there could be tight, especially in the wake of Mr. Biden’s dominating victory in South Carolina.
In general, polling averages show Mr. Sanders in the lead with about 30 percent support — a tick lower than the 33 percent support he earned in what was essentially a two-way contest with Mrs. Clinton in 2016. Mr. Sanders thinks winning Texas is important enough that he spent the day of the Nevada caucuses in El Paso and San Antonio. He is also hoping to draw support from the state’s large Latino population, a group he has performed well with in early voting states.
Mr. Biden has been lurking in second, around six percentage points behind Mr. Sanders — a gap that could narrow further as Mr. Biden seeks to build momentum off Saturday’s win. Texas’ Democratic electorate leans more moderate than solidly liberal California, which could provide an advantage for him in the state.
Meanwhile, both Mr. Bloomberg and Ms. Warren are polling well enough in Texas that they could reach the all-important 15 percent threshold and earn a significant haul of delegates. With so many delegates at stake in Texas and California, and so few candidates likely to earn 15 percent support, whether Mr. Bloomberg and Ms. Warren manage to clear that bar could help determine whether their candidacies remain viable come Wednesday.
Outside of the Democratic Presidential primary, M.J. Hegar, a former Air Force helicopter pilot who came close to beating an incumbent Republican in a House race in 2018, will seek to stave off several Democratic primary challengers for the right to try to unseat Senator John Cornyn. On the House side, there are also many primaries that will determine who will be involved in what are expected to be competitive races. Among the candidates for a House seat is Dr. Ronny L. Jackson — the former White House physician and failed nominee to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs — who is running for Congress in Texas’ deeply conservative 13th District, along with more than a dozen other Republicans.
Texas has been a solidly red state that has been edging closer to purple in recent years. The results and turnout on Tuesday will help make the case that either the Democratic hype is real or the Republican statewide grip remains firm. In the 10-day early-voting period leading up to Super Tuesday, Democratic turnout exceeded that of 2016, as more than one million Democrats voted in person and by mail.
North Carolina
Though Bernie Sanders lost the North Carolina Democratic primary to Mrs. Clinton in 2016, the Vermont senator managed to win nearly 41 percent of the vote, giving him a 47-delegate haul — his best showing by delegate count in the southeast that year, with the exception of Florida. On Tuesday, Mr. Sanders will look to build on 2016, particularly in progressive enclaves and college towns. But he will likely face strong efforts from Mr. Biden and Mr. Bloomberg.
One crucial question is how much enthusiasm and momentum for Mr. Biden will spill over from neighboring South Carolina, where the former vice president’s big primary victory on Saturday was powered by strong African-American support.
A High Point University poll released Monday showed Mr. Sanders with 31 percent support and Mr. Bloomberg in second with 18 percent. But the poll was conducted in the week before Mr. Biden’s decisive win in South Carolina. On Monday, a FiveThirtyEight average of polls had Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders in a near tie with around 24 percent support each (and Mr. Biden slightly ahead), and Mr. Bloomberg with about 16 percent.
Four years ago, Mr. Sanders dominated in Orange County, home to progressive bastions like Chapel Hill and Carrboro, and Buncombe County, home to Asheville, the attractive mountain city full of New Age seekers and liberal northern transplants. J. Michael Bitzer, a professor of political science at Catawba College in Salisbury, N.C., said he will also be watching places like Durham and Mecklenburg counties Tuesday to gauge Mr. Sanders’s chances of victory. “If he’s going after the youth vote and the more progressive vote, it’s going to come out of those university counties,” Dr. Bitzer said.
North Carolina Democrats will also choose a Senate candidate who will likely face off against the incumbent, Thom Tillis. Mr. Tillis, who is expected to win the Republican primary Tuesday, showed some signs of bucking President Trump early on, but has since fallen in line as a staunch loyalist.
The top Democratic primary contenders are the front-runner, Cal Cunningham, an Army veteran and former state senator endorsed by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and Erica Smith, a state senator. Ms. Smith has received significant — and unwanted — ad buys from a Republican-aligned political action committee touting her as the true progressive in the race.
Virginia
No state has swung more decisively to the Democrats in the Trump era than Virginia, where Republicans were thrown out of office in three successive election years in a scathing referendum on the president.
The presidential primary on Tuesday will test whether that energy has been driven primarily by progressives or moderates. Mr. Sanders campaigned hard in the state last week, with large rallies of his youth-skewing supporters in Northern Virginia, Richmond and Virginia Beach.
Mr. Biden also visited in recent days, scooping up endorsements from elected Democrats, a trend that picked up speed after his South Carolina victory on Saturday. Terry McAuliffe, the former governor and perhaps the most influential Democrat in the state, came off the sidelines for Mr. Biden late Saturday. He joined Senator Tim Kaine, two congresswomen who flipped Republican seats in 2018 and a slew of state lawmakers.
Mr. Bloomberg is counting on a return on the massive investment in Virginia state politics he has made in recent years, more than $10 million to elect Democrats at every level. The largess included donations to 22 state races from his gun-control group, Everytown for Gun Safety. Gun control was a top issue in the 2019 elections when Democrats took over both legislative chambers for the first time in a generation. One beneficiary, Delegate Nancy Guy of Virginia Beach, who won her race by just 27 votes, is among three state lawmakers who endorsed Mr. Bloomberg.
A Bloomberg environmental group, Beyond Carbon, spent $348,000 on behalf of Ms. Guy’s race last year. Mr. Bloomberg made his eighth visit to the state on Monday since announcing his candidacy, stopping at one of his seven field offices. He had this to say about Mr. Buttigieg and Ms. Klobuchar dropping out: “I thought both of them behaved themselves.’’
There are no down-ballot races in Virginia on Tuesday.
Massachusetts
The Democratic primary in Massachusetts will be an enormous test for Ms. Warren, who once expected to run away with it easily: It is, after all, her home state.
Now, polls show an extremely close race between Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders.
These polls were conducted before Mr. Buttigieg, Ms. Klobuchar and Mr. Steyer dropped out of the presidential race, and mostly before the South Carolina primary, so the picture on the ground may well have changed. But the underlying reality remains: If Ms. Warren can’t pull out a victory in Massachusetts, it will become very difficult for her to continue to argue for her viability.
There will be interesting down-ballot races to watch for in September. The main one is the Senate contest between the incumbent, Edward J. Markey, and Representative Joseph P. Kennedy III — arguably the biggest Senate primary in the country.
This is more of a generational clash than an ideological one: Both men have progressive records, but Mr. Markey is 73 and Mr. Kennedy — a grandson of Robert F. Kennedy — is 39.
Mr. Kennedy’s decision to run for Senate leaves his House seat in the Fourth District open, and a crowded field of Democrats are running for it.
Minnesota
Four years ago, Mr. Sanders cruised to an upstart victory in Minnesota, a much-needed win for the Vermont senator to keep pace with Mrs. Clinton on a day she jumped out to a significant delegate lead.
With Ms. Klobuchar announcing that she was ending her presidential bid on Monday and endorsing Mr. Biden, Minnesota could become a significant delegate haul for the senator from Vermont.
The state’s progressive base, which helped elect Representative Ilhan Omar in 2018, remains loyal to Mr. Sanders, and his campaign hopes to win a big share of the state’s 75 delegates.
Whether Ms. Klobuchar’s endorsement will lead her supporters to back Mr. Biden remains an open question. The senior senator from Minnesota is immensely popular in her home state, and recent polling showed her maintaining a slim lead over Mr. Sanders.
Early voting was well underway in the state — Ms. Klobuchar herself voted on Feb. 22 — so she may still receive some votes, though any delegates will probably be either freed or directed to Mr. Biden.
Injecting more uncertainty into the Minnesota primary is Mr. Bloomberg, who has spent more than $10 million on ads in the state, according to Advertising Analytics, in an effort to amass delegates in some of the more rural and ignored congressional districts. Though he remains in the low single digits in statewide polls, Mr. Bloomberg has been the sole political advertiser in some markets, including Duluth in the northern part of the state.
Minnesota has been reliably blue for decades, and was the only state to go for a Democrat in 1984 thanks to the home-state candidate, Walter Mondale, but the 2016 election showed a Republican surge, as Mrs. Clinton eked out a victory over President Trump by just 45,000 votes. The president’s re-election campaign has been focused on the state, including holding a rally there in October.