Joe Biden was headed to a blowout victory over Bernie Sanders in Democratic presidential primaries in Florida, Illinois and Arizona on Tuesday, moving him closer to clinching the nomination to face President Donald Trump in November’s election.
Biden was leading Sanders by 61% to 23% with nearly 80% of the precincts reporting in Florida, one of three states voting on Tuesday. Television networks and Edison Research projected he would easily beat Sanders.
Fox News projected Biden also won in Illinois, where most polls also had closed but early results had not started coming in. Arizona was still voting.
Biden, the former vice president, hopes big victories on Tuesday will help him amass an unassailable advantage over Sanders in the race to choose a challenger to the Republican Trump in the Nov. 3 election, before the race enters an extended hiatus with no voting scheduled for weeks.
Florida, a traditional battleground in the general election that Trump won by 1.2 percentage points in 2016, is the biggest prize of the day with 219 delegates.
Edison Research polls found a majority of voters in all three states trusted Biden more than Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, to handle a major crisis, Edison Research polls showed.
The polls also found about half of voters in Illinois were “very concerned” about the potential effects of the outbreak, which caused Ohio to cancel its planned nominating contest on Tuesday.
Gloved poll workers and hand sanitizer dispensers met voters in the three states amid a health crisis that has upended the campaign and shut down much of American life as in other parts of the world.
Sanders, 78, who trailed Biden, 77, in opinion polls in all three states, could face renewed pressure to end his bid if he loses badly on Tuesday. Many Democrats do not want a repeat of 2016, when they believe his long, bitter primary battle with Hillary Clinton played a role in her upset loss to Trump, 73.
Because of the coronavirus, Edison Research, which normally conducts exit polls, spoke by telephone to early voters and others who planned to vote.
The polls found seven of 10 voters in Florida and six of 10 in Illinois and Arizona trusted Biden more than Sanders in a crisis.
