The still-being-counted California primary results are shifting heavily in Joe Biden’s favor

| 11:58 pm EST March 7, 2020
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The prevailing media narrative going into Super Tuesday was that Bernie Sanders was going to win California in a huge blowout, and probably win Texas as well, thus giving him the largest delegate haul of the day. As we all know by now, that didn’t happen. Biden won Texas, and the majority of the smaller states, easily putting him in the overall delegate lead. Here’s the kicker.

California has a unique primary system which simply requires mail-in votes to get their vote postmarked by election day. That means it can take an additional few days for all of the votes to even arrive, let alone be counted. By the time Tuesday night was over, it was mathematically clear that Sanders would win California. But because delegates are awarded proportionately, the final margin of victory in the state was going to matter greatly.

As of the official updated voting tally right now, posted by Google, Sanders is now only 7.3 points ahead of Biden in California. This is remarkable. Going into Tuesday, most pundits were debating whether Biden would even get enough votes in the state to meet the minimum threshold and get anydelegates. As the tally currently stands, Sanders has only gained thirty-six more delegates than Biden in California – standing in sharp contrast to the narrative that Sanders could win all four hundred California delegates.

The votes are still being counted, and based on the California primary’s recent track record, it could take a long time to get a final margin of victory and final delegate count out of the state. But it’s clear that the last minute mail-in votes in California, which came after Biden won South Carolina and gained the endorsements of Buttigieg and Klobuchar, are trending in Biden’s favor. There still appears to be no path for Biden to win the state – but the final margin could end up being even smaller than the current seven points. So much for a blowout.