(Image Credit: Bernie 2020)
With nearly all of the results in, Bernie Sanders has won the Democratic Party’s New Hampshire primary contest. Finishing second was Pete Buttigieg, and a surprise third place result from Amy Klobuchar.
The primary also saw three candidates bail out of the race; popular millennial figure Andrew Yang, and the near invisible Michael Bennet, as well as former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick who ran the most bizarre, nondescript campaign thus far – but was still given top billing by mainstream media networks despite getting only a handful of votes.
With 90% of the returns in, the results so far are as follows:
Source: The Associated Press
Tuesday’s biggest losers had to be former DNC elite favorites, Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren, who both ran disastrous campaigns and are not likely to win any delegates. With all of the free mainstream media coverage (CNN, MSNBC) and presumptive status heaped upon these two establishment figures, they simply couldn’t convince Americans to actually vote for them.
Consider their campaigns on life support from here on out.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has claimed his second consecutive popular vote victory, but has encountered an unexpected challenge from the middle of the pack by 38 year-old South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who has come under heavy fire from the party’s working class base because of the extraordinary amount of billionaires and corporations that have poured money into his campaign.
Sanders has done relatively well so far, but not nearly enough to achieve ‘escape velocity’ from the rest of this crowded pack. As the Atlantic Magazine points out, thus far Sanders has only garnered a fraction of the votes he received in 2016:
The roughly 26 percent share of the total vote that Sanders captured represents much less than half of his winning 60 percent just four years ago. And similar to former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s performance in Iowa, Sanders won the smallest share of voters ever garnered by a Democratic winner of the New Hampshire primary. (The previous low was nearly 29 percent, for Jimmy Carter in 1976.)
Arguably, 2016 was a much thinner field with only Bernie and Hillary, but this statistic has still left some pundits asking, ‘Where did all of those votes go?’ (did they go to Trump?). Based on this math, this means the potential for a tight three-way, or even four-way race, is still a possibility going forward.
From these first two state primaries we can now see the real schism emerge within the Democratic Party – a schism which very much mirrors the 2016 Democratic race which went down to the wire – between billionaire donor and media favorite Hillary Clinton, and grassroots left-wing populist Bernie Sanders. The rest of the field represents a collection of factions of support which is generally tied to either a specific issue or a personality. Thus far, neither of the front runners has been able to harness that broad-based popular support required to claim an outright lead. This may happen later, as less popular and weaker candidates exit from the the field.
Former New York Mayor and multi billionaire, Michael Bloomberg, has bought his way into the race but has foregone the first four primary states because of late registration. He is now banking on Super Tuesday, which will be on will be on March 3rd and will include the following states: Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Democrats Abroad, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia.
Next up will be the Nevada Caucuses, with Sanders and Biden leading in polling, but those polls will likely shift now after New Hampshire result sinks in.
After Super Tuesday, it is likely that the top three candidates will have emerged having solidified their base – as they head into the all-important large states like Texas, New York and California, along with the crucial rust belt states.
All eyes are now on March 3rd.
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