Bernie Sanders takes slight early lead in Washington state Primary

In early results from the Washington state primary released Tuesday night, Bernie Sanders has a very slight lead over Joe Biden.

Sanders posted 32.70% of the vote and Biden was at 32.49% Tuesday night. Only 2,084 separated votes made up the difference. Elizabeth Warren was coming in at third with 12.29%, followed by Bloomberg and then Buttigieg.

Live Washington state primary results

Joe Biden won Michigan’s Democratic primary earlier on Tuesday, seizing a key battleground state that helped propel Bernie Sanders’ insurgent candidacy four years ago. The former vice president’s victory in Michigan, as well as Missouri and Mississippi, dealt a serious blow to Sanders, who is urgently seeking to jump-start his flagging campaign.

Sanders could still get a boost in Idaho or Washington state, and was recently declared the winner in the North Dakota caucuses. But fewer delegates are at stake than in Mississippi, Missouri, and Michigan, where Biden’s decisive performance again showed his strength with working-class voters and African Americans, who are vital to winning the Democratic nomination.

It’s a dramatic reversal of fortune for Biden, whose campaign appeared on the brink of collapse just two weeks ago. Sanders opened the nomination process with strong showings in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada, but Biden rebounded in South Carolina and built on that success with a surprise Super Tuesday rout last week.

The campaigns faced new uncertainty amid fears of the spreading coronavirus. Sanders and Biden both abruptly canceled public events in Ohio that were scheduled for Tuesday night. Sanders’ campaign said all future events would be decided on a case-by-case basis, while Biden called off a scheduled upcoming stop in Florida. The Democratic National Committee also said that Sunday’s debate between Sanders and Biden would be conducted without an audience.

Tuesday marked the first time voters weighed in on the primary since it effectively narrowed to a two-person race between Sanders and Biden. It showed that Sanders had yet to really broaden his appeal among African Americans after earlier setbacks in the South on Super Tuesday. Biden, meanwhile, kept up momentum after a dominant South Carolina victory.

An AP VoteCast survey showed Biden leading among both men and women, as well as among both white voters and African American voters.

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Associated Press writers contributed to this report, including Mike Householder in Detroit and Seth Borenstein in Washington.

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