Supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders cheer during a Super Tuesday results watch party at the Teamsters & Chauffeurs Union office in West Valley City on Tuesday, March 3, 2020. | Steve Griffin, Deseret News
Joe Biden claiming more states than Sanders in early results
SALT LAKE CITY — Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders was leading in Utah’s first Super Tuesday Democratic presidential primary with 32% of the vote in initial results, followed by former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, with 19%, and former Vice President Joe Biden with just over 15%.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren was in fourth place in Utah, with 15% of the early vote, the threshold to receive delegates. Utah’s 29 pledged Democratic delegates are not expected to be immediately allocated.
The Utah primary was called early for Sanders by the Associated Press and other media outlets, but Biden was still expecting a boost in Utah from his big win in Saturday’s South Carolina primary and growing list of endorsements.
The two candidates who just dropped out of the race and endorsed the former vice president — former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, had 12% of the vote, and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, had 5%.
Biden scored key victories in Minnesota and across the South, including Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Virginia. Sanders countered with wins in his home state of Vermont and in Colorado, early returns show.
Sanders was also leading in delegate-rich states of California and Texas, while he and Biden were in a heat for Maine.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump easily claimed the Utah Republican primary with 88% of the early vote.
“Tonight proved that Utahns are firmly united behind President Trump,” Trump Victory spokeswoman Samantha Zager said in a statement. “No matter which socialist Democrat ultimately makes it on the ballot in November, Utahns will choose to continue the success they’ve experienced under President Trump’s ‘Promises Made. Promises Kept’ agenda and reelect him to four more years.”
Sanders, the big winner of the Utah Democratic Party caucus vote in 2016, held a rally Monday at the Utah State Fairpark that attracted several thousand supporters who waited up to two hours in the cold and mud to hear the self-described democratic socialist’s call for “a government that works for all and not just the few.”
“There are definitely a lot of Bernie fans here,” said Lex Scott, founder of Black Lives Matter Utah and one of five co-chairs of Sanders’ Utah campaign. “He’s genuine and he hits home with the majority of us ... his message really resonates with working class people who want change in this country.”
Midvale City Councilman Dustin Gettel, another Sanders co-chair in Utah, said the early numbers in the state “couldn’t be more encouraging.” But Gettel said given Biden’s wins across the country, “at the end of the night the delegate count between Sanders and Biden is going to be pretty dead even.”
Scott declined to say Biden is surging ahead.
“If you’re a football team that just lost five games and you won one game and people are talking about you going to the Super Bowl, I don’t understand that,” Scott said, but added she will vote for the party’s nominee in November, whoever it is. “We cannot throw a tantrum if our candidate doesn’t win.”
Biden backer Scott Howell said the vice president’s campaign strategy kept him from campaigning in Utah because the “plan was to have a huge South Carolina surge,” to resuscitate his campaign going into Super Tuesday.
“They went for a Hail Mary and they put all the resources, all the dollars, into that and it worked,” said Howell, a former Democratic state Senate leader, promising Biden will hold a campaign event in Utah. “I’m telling you right now, he will come out here.”
Howell said Biden appeals to moderates in Utah, including some Republicans “who want to see a change but they don’t want Bernie. They’re not a socialist mentality. They believe in fiscal responsibility. ... They know who Joe Biden is. They know what he stands for. They know his moral integrity.”
Bloomberg’s state director, Lauren Littlefield, said he expects to finish strong in Utah. The billionaire candidate has spent more than $3 million in advertising alone in the state and has opened two offices with a paid staff of 20 people.
“We have had the largest footprint of any presidential campaign,” she said. “We’ve made thousands of phone calls today alone. ... Our goal tonight is to put some delegates on the board, make sure we get some national delegates, and then on to convention.”
Earlier in the day Bloomberg described what winning looks like for him on Super Tuesday in an interview with Deseret News Opinion Editor Boyd Matheson, host of KSL-Newsradio’s Inside Sources.
“Well, you’re not going to get the most delegates. I think that’s clear. But you want a respectable finish where you get delegates in lots of states,” Bloomberg said. “And our strategy is to get to the convention with nobody having a majority, then all of the delegates are free, and they start thinking, ‘OK, who can beat Donald Trump and who can run the country?’ And that’s where we make our case.”
Chris Karpowitz, co-director of BYU’s Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy, said it’s “clear that early voting, while convenient for voters, can also be challenging when the list of candidates changes at the last second.”
Because ballots were mailed out weeks ago in Utah’s largely by-mail election, many Utahns had already voted before some candidates ended their campaigns — and before Biden won South Carolina and began adding new support from fellow moderates.
“Clearly, some of the enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders from 2016 carried over to 2020, but not all of it,” Karpowitz said, predicting the Vermont senator would win Utah, “but not with anywhere near the dominating performance he had in 2016” when he beat the eventual Democratic Party nominee, Hillary Clinton, with nearly 80% of the vote.
Utah, a state that hasn’t voted for a Democrat for president since 1964, went for Trump four years ago.
At the University of Utah’s Hinckley Institute of Politics, dozens of excited students packed a room laden with TV screens and projectors to eat pizza and watch election results expected to help clarify which Democrat will take on Republican President Donald Trump in November.
“It’s surprising to see so much energy because it’s just the primary,” said Lauren Harvey, a sophomore at the University of Utah. “I voted for Elizabeth Warren and I’m a little bummed to see that she’s not being picked for literally anything.”
Sierra Mcneil, a senior, told the Deseret News she also voted for Warren because, unlike Sanders, the Massachusetts senator has a proven track record.
“They have the same level of ideas, they’re both pretty progressive, they both want to see big structural change in America,” McNeil said. “But Elizabeth has the plans to get it done.”
Both Harvey and McNeil said that regardless of Tuesdays results, they would support any of the candidates. But both had some reservations about voting for Bloomberg.
“I would cry all over my ballot, but I would vote for Bloomberg,” Harvey said about the prospect of a Bloomberg-Trump general election.
“Same,” said McNeil, “I couldn’t vote for Trump.”
State Elections Director Justin Lee the record for the number of ballots cast in a presidential primary — 428,459 in 2008 — was broken several hours before the polls closed at 8 p.m. By 7 p.m., 479,771 votes had been cast and the turnout record had been broken, too, with 32.5% of voters participating.
In 2008 there were contested Republican and Democratic races — and now-Utah Sen. Mitt Romney was making his first bid for the White House. In 2016, the state allowed political parties to run presidential preference votes at their March caucuses. Long lines and other issues contributed to only around 250,000 Utahns participating.
2020 has officially become the highest turnout Presidential Primary Election in Utah state history at 32.5% active voter participation (479,771 votes) - and still counting!
— Vote Utah (@ElectionsUtah) March 4, 2020
Still want to vote? Polls close at 8pm.
Find out where at https://t.co/B2BWWZyCzv#utpol
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