Joe Biden has won Florida in a huge blowout

| 7:16 pm EDT March 17, 2020
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The polls close in the Florida primary at 7pm local time, which gets tricky because most of the state is on eastern time, but a fraction of the panhandle is on central time. For that reason, the TV networks may not be willing to call Florida for Joe Biden until we reach 7pm central time / 8pm eastern time. But the numbers coming in thus far leave literally zero doubt about the outcome.

With 22% of the votes reported, Joe Biden is leading by a stunning forty points. That’s enough for Palmer Report to call Florida for Biden. We’re not the only ones. Dave Wasserman from Redistrict, who consistently calls states before the TV networks do, just called Florida for Biden as well. We’re not going to try to predict whether Biden will end up winning by forty, twenty, or fifty points by the time all the votes are counted. But there’s no doubt Biden has won in a huge blowout of some kind.

There have been questions about what the coronavirus crisis would do to turnout, and whether that might impact the margins. But because Joe Biden was up by such a huge amount in Florida to begin with, it’s not surprising to see that he ended up winning in a blowout.

The next state to watch for is Illinois, where the polls close at 8pm eastern time. After that it’ll be awhile until we see results from Arizona, where some polls close at 9pm eastern time, and other polls close at 10pm eastern time. Joe Biden is expected to also win those two states in blowouts.