As debate rages about the viability of even holding primaries Tuesday amid social distancing edicts, former Vice President Joe Biden carries a 153-delegate lead (898-745), according to AP delegate projections.
The latest delegates to be assigned came from Monday's calling of Washington state's primary for Biden, and Tuesday's primaries in Florida (219), Illinois (155), and Arizona (67) – Ohio (136) has postponed – appear to be favorable states for former President Barack Obama's vice president to add to his commanding lead.
It takes 1,991 total delegates to clinch the Democratic presidential nomination and Biden is nearly halfway there. Following the data of his older voter support, Biden might be facing challenges in turnout as the more vulnerable elderly might pass on exposing themselves to voting in public.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is far more popular with young voters, which are far less vulnerable to serious complications from coronavirus and would be far more inclined to go vote in public.
Biden's lead means Sanders must win more than 57% of the delegates yet to be allocated to clinch the Democratic nomination.
With so many delegates at stake, blowouts in Florida or Illinois could all but end Sanders' presidential campaign.
As health officials warned against gatherings of greater than 10 people, President Donald Trump said elections should proceed.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine failed in court, but succeeded late Monday with an emergency health declaration to push his state's primary into June. Elections officials in Arizona, Illinois, and Florida said they were moving forward with plans to vote.
"Florida is proceeding with [Tuesday's] scheduled election," Secretary of State Laurel Lee said during the governor's press conference Monday. "Based on the best information that we have, we are confident that voters in Florida can safely and securely go to the polls and cast their ballots in [Tuesday's] election."
Elections officials across Florida are taking precautions against the virus, saying poll staff are prepared to swab down voting machines and ensuring the safety of voters and precinct workers.
As of Monday, about 2 million Floridians had already voted early or sent their ballots through the mail, Lee said.
"I don't have to tell anybody that we are living in a very unprecedented and strange moment in the history of our country," Sanders said, urging supporters it might be time to "rethink our value system, rethink many of the systems we operate under."
Sanders is unsure about allowing voting to proceed, noting it is important "to make sure that everybody who wants to vote has the right to vote, and that may not be the case now."
But voting rights activists are waging a battle on whether postponing elections undermine U.S. democracy vs. the fairness of subjecting Biden's older voter support to unnecessary danger amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Mustafa Tameez, a Democratic strategist with ties to many of the party's top donors, noted that Americans voted during World War I and World War II. More recent voting during crisis came on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when balloting was already underway but was suspended for two weeks in New York's mayoral primary because of the terrorist attacks.
"There should be no circumstance in which we say, because of a crisis — regardless of the crisis — that we stop our electoral government," Tameez said.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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