Joe Biden’s supporters didn’t think he would win Massachusetts. Here’s how he did.
No one expected Joe Biden to win Massachusetts — not even his own supporters.
But in what was ostensibly a contest between two New Englanders — home-state U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders — it was the former vice president from Delaware who swept to victory with roughly a third of the vote, riding a wave of momentum across the state and across the country on Super Tuesday.
“It was not expected. It certainly wasn’t expected or predicted within the Biden camp,” said Biden backer and state Sen. Marc Pacheco, D-Taunton. “We were trying to do what we could with limited resources at that time to get a message out. We were hoping for a decent showing, but I don’t think there was anybody that really expected that we would win this state.”
Biden’s support here came late in the game, with a CNN exit poll showing 43% of voters surveyed decided to cast ballots for him in just the last few days. Supporters and strategists had predicted a third-place finish for Biden in the Massachusetts primary, and said it was likely his victory in South Carolina and the consolidation of the moderate lane around his resuscitated candidacy that gave him a massive boost in the liberal Bay State.
“Joe Biden offers a very reassuring leadership role and I think that was very appealing,” said U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch, a Biden supporter.
While Sanders has “many strong points, I think his call for another revolution was not what people were looking for in Massachusetts,” he added.
Biden won in all corners of the state, cleaning up on the South Shore and across many parts of the North Shore and the Merrimack Valley. He just barely edged Sanders in Boston, and managed to take several western Massachusetts communities Sanders won in 2016. He did it all with just one office in Quincy and without ever campaigning in the state.
“We thought it would be a very close race between the former vice president and Bernie and Elizabeth Warren. We thought they would split it evenly,” said Lynch, whose congressional district includes parts of Boston and the South Shore. “So I was very pleasantly surprised to see Joe do so well.”
In the end, Biden received 33.6% of the vote while Sanders got 26.7% and Warren got 21.4%, according to the Associated Press.
Strategists say the former vice president’s blowout win over Warren on her home turf is bad not only for her presidential aspirations, but possibly for her future in the Senate as well.
“That’s stunning. That means that progressive and liberal Democrats who voted for her for the Senate, twice, and probably would vote for her again for the Senate, just decided ‘Nope, not doing this,’” said Democratic strategist Tony Cignoli.
Biden won in several affluent towns that Warren carried easily in 2018, such as Concord, Lexington and Acton. And he and Sanders divvied up many of the western Massachusetts communities she won by wide margins in her last campaign as well.
While Warren doesn’t face re-election until 2024, Democratic strategist Dan Payne said, “Coming in third in her home state is a warning that her Senate seat could be in jeopardy.”
from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/38kN5jv
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