WASHINGTON — Based on early returns Tuesday night, Joe Biden seemed on track to continue his new-found dominance in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. He won Mississippi, Missouri and Michigan, was tied in the vote at midnight in Washington, and held a lead in Idaho.

Sanders led only in North Dakota, where only 10 per cent of the vote had been counted by midnight.

A week after the 14-state Super Tuesday primaries gave big wins to Biden and narrowed the contest to a two-person race between him and Bernie Sanders, six states voted on a Somewhat-Less-Super Tuesday, with 352 delegates at stake out of the 3,979 total pledged delegates available in all states nationally. It also marked the close of voting in the Democrats Abroad primary, which included Americans living in Canada.

Tuesday’s results gave Biden a commanding lead in the contest, with a favourable primary schedule still ahead. For Sanders, who appeared to hold a commanding lead just weeks ago, the path to victory just became more difficult to imagine.

Concerns about holding large events amid the spread of coronavirus prompted both candidates to cancel events planned for primary night.

Speaking in Philadelphia to campaign staff and members of the press, Biden repeated a by-now familiar line about his campaign recently having been declared dead.

“It’s more than a comeback for this campaign, it’s a comeback for the soul of the nation,” he said of his victories. Promising to take nothing for granted in the weeks ahead, he congratulated Sanders and his supporters for their energy and passion. “We’re going to beat Donald Trump. We’re going to beat him together.”

Sanders did not speak Tuesday night, resting at home in Burlingon, Vermont.

Michigan was by far the largest and most important of the states voting Tuesday, with 125 pledged delegates available to be won, and it had been the focus of intense campaigning over the past week by Sanders and Biden.

With 80 per cent of the vote in at midnight, Biden led in Michigan 53 to 38, appearing to be well ahead in both Detroit and its surrounding suburbs.

The result there marked a stark reversal for Sanders, who won Michigan in 2016 in a surprise upset over eventual nominee Hillary Clinton. In the days leading up to Tuesday’s vote, he held massive outdoor rallies in Ann Arbor and Grand Rapids, attacking Biden for his past votes on the Iraq War, social security, and trade agreements like NAFTA, and selling himself as the candidate who could motivate voters to turn out to beat Donald Trump.

“In a general election, which candidate can generate the enthusiasm and the excitement and the voter turnout we need?” Sanders asked a rally Tuesday in St. Louis. “If you want to defeat Trump, which all Democrats do and the majority of independents do and some Republicans do, we are that campaign.”

The results from South Carolina and Super Tuesday, however, showed that increased turnout seemed to mostly benefit Biden, and that the masses of young voters that the Sanders campaign had expected to motivate were not materializing. Exit polls reported by CNN showed that Sanders indeed won young voters by a dominant margin, but that they made up only 15 per cent of voters, and that Biden had dominated with older voters, who turned out in larger numbers.

Biden made headlines on primary day after a confrontation was captured on video at a campaign event, in which a man accused him of wanting to “take away our guns.”

“You’re full of s - - -,” Biden shot back. “I support the Second Amendment.” As the video went viral, supporters and detractors alike held it up as evidence of Biden’s suitability to lead the country.

Washington State, a Sanders stronghold in the 2016 primaries, was the second-largest prize available Tuesday, with 89 pledged delegates available in a primary that relied exclusively, for the first time, on mail-in ballots. At midnight, with roughly two-thirds of the vote counted, the two candidates were tied with 33 per cent of the vote each.

Missouri, where Sanders lost to Clinton by only one per cent in 2016, was won decisively by Biden by 25 per cent margin. In Mississippi, a place where Biden had expected to win big on the strength of his support in the substantial Black community there, he drew more than 80 per cent of votes.

North Dakota, also voted Tuesday. As of midnight, with 10 per cent of the vote reported, Sanders led there 40 per cent to 26 per cent. In Idaho, with 34 per cent of the vote counted, Biden led by 6 points.

The schedule ahead appears to be an uphill battle for Sanders, especially the Florida primary on March 17. Three other states vote next week, all of which Sanders lost to Clinton in 2016.

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On a CNN panel as the results came in, former candidate Andrew Yang said he’d previously not offered an endorsement because he’d liked Bernie Sanders and wanted to let the process play out. “It has,” he said. “The math says Joe is our prohibitive nominee. We need to bring the party together. We need to start working on defeating Donald Trump in the fall.”

The math allowing a path for Sanders to win the nomination is growing more and more difficult.

He will likely need some significant event to shake up the race if he is to have any chance at all, with next opportunity being a March 15 debate in Arizona. That will be the first time the two remaining candidates will have the chance to debate head-to-head, an opportunity Sanders supporters anticipate against the famously gaffe-prone Biden, who has appeared unfocused at times in prior debates.

However, it’s not clear at this stage that even a clear debate victory would be enough to make up the difference. Nothing in this race — or American politics at all — this year has gone as expected, but after his third straight victory in major primary days, Biden appears exceedingly likely to be the Democrat who will take on Trump in November.

With files from the Associated Press

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