Joe Biden won the Democratic primary in Michigan Tuesday, NBC News projected, and further extended his delegate lead over Bernie Sanders with additional wins in Mississippi and Missouri and Idaho.
Get the latest race results and delegate totals
Sanders won North Dakota, NBC News projected Wednesday morning, but Washington's primary election remains too close to call. More than 350 delegates will ultimately be allocated from the six states that voted Tuesday — the fourth-largest day on the primary calendar for the Democratic candidates.
Highlights from Tuesday's election:
- Biden's delicate dance to win over the 'Bernie Brothers.'
- Key takeaways from election night, plus an analysis on how Sanders divided Democrats.
- Live updating delegate count.
Download the NBC News app for full coverage and alerts on the latest news.
NBC News Exit Poll: Most Mississippi Democrats support 'Medicare for All'
Sizable shares of Mississippi Democratic primary voters support "Medicare for All," according to early results from the NBC News Exit Poll.
Fully 6 in 10 say they support replacing all private health insurance with a single government plan for everyone. About half as many, 32 percent, say they oppose the plan.
Though most Democratic voters who have cast ballots in the 2020 primary race so far have favored "Medicare for All," there is some variation in support state to state.
Compared with other Southern states that held contests prior to March 10, larger majorities of Mississippi Democratic primary voters support this policy.
Smaller majorities of Democrats in Tennessee, Virginia and Alabama say they favor "Medicare for All."
NBC News Exit Poll: Most Missouri voters feel their finances are holding steady
Just over 6 in 10 Missouri primary voters say their family’s financial situation is holding steady, according to early results from the NBC News Exit Poll. Another 24 percent are getting ahead and 11 percent feel they are falling behind.
There are no differences in these results among supporters of the two remaining Democratic candidates.
Despite this relative stability, half of Democratic primary voters in Missouri say the country’s economic system needs a complete overhaul, while 41 percent say it only needs minor changes and 8 percent say it works well enough as is.
Voters earning less than $50,000 a year (58 percent) are more likely than those who are in a higher income bracket (43 percent) to say the system needs an overhaul. Missouri’s 3.4 percent unemployment rate is just under the national average of 3.6 percent.
Sanders, Biden cancel rallies because of coronavirus fears
Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden canceled campaign rallies planned for Tuesday night in Cleveland due to concerns about the coronavirus, a first on the 2020 presidential campaign trail as concerns about the outbreak mount.
"Out of concern for public health and safety, we are canceling tonight’s rally in Cleveland," Sanders' campaign communications director Mike Casca said in a statement. "We are heeding the public warnings from Ohio state officials, who have communicated concern about holding large, indoor events during the coronavirus outbreak."
Casca added that the Vermont senator "would like to express his regret to the thousands of Ohioans who had planned to attend the event tonight" and said, "all future Bernie 2020 events will be evaluated on a case by case basis."
Hand sanitizers, elbow bumps in lieu of handshakes, and shorter rope lines have already quickly become the new reality of campaigning in the time of the coronavirus.
A debate scheduled for Sunday in Phoenix between Sanders and Biden is currently scheduled to proceed, but the Democratic National Committee and CNN, which is hosting the debate, have said they are in contact with local officials and will follow their guidance.
NBC News Exit Poll: Compared to 2016, Mississippi Democratic primary electorate looks whiter, older
According to early results from the NBC News Exit Poll, the Mississippi Democratic primary electorate skews slightly older and whiter than it did in 2016.
In today’s primary race, white voters make up roughly 3 in 10 of those casting ballots in the Mississippi contest. This compares with just a quarter who were white in the Clinton versus Sanders matchup four years ago. In 2016, Sanders did slightly better among white voters than he did among blacks.
Today’s primary electorate also looks considerably older than it did four years ago: In 2016, 4 in 10 were younger than 45 years of age, while a majority were older 45. Today, early exit poll results show that young voters make up just a quarter of the electorate.
Sanders will also look to shore up support among the state’s ideologically liberal voters. In the Super Tuesday contests, Sanders held his own among the South’s very liberal voters, faring much better among this group than moderate and conservative-leaning Democrats.
The ideological complexion of today’s electorate looks fairly similar to 2016: similar shares call themselves very liberal on political matters, but a slightly higher share call themselves moderate or conservative compared with four years ago.
ANALYSIS: Biden's tough talk a new tack for Democrats
President Donald Trump turned insulting big-name rivals and celebrities into a form of modern political art. His top Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, has refined it into a post-modern name-calling style exhibited in limited fashion to voters who confront him with cheap shots.
"Don't be such a horse's ass," Biden scolded a worker at an auto plant in Detroit on Tuesday as Michigan voters went to the polls.
The worker had falsely asserted that Biden wants to "end our Second Amendment right" to own guns. Biden, the author of a decadelong 1994 ban on certain semi-automatic weapons, has proposed new gun control measures but not a repeal of the Second Amendment — which as president he would have no formal role in adopting.
But the heated exchange, in which Biden threatened to slap the man and said he was "full of s—," was just the latest example of a tough-talk tactic the former vice president has deployed repeatedly to push back on critics on the campaign trail. While allies of Trump and Sen. Bernie Sanders say the aggressive approach will backfire politically, many Democrats and some anti-Trump Republicans like the unusually muscular response.
Read the full analysis here.
Trump campaign and supporters spread misleading Sanders video
A misleadingly edited video of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was released by President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign on Tuesday and spread by conservative allies.
The video, in which the Democratic presidential candidate appears to say he would not close the borders to protect Americans from the coronavirus, was cut from a detailed answer Sanders gave at a Fox News town hall on Monday in which he said, "We need scientists to tell us the appropriate approach, not a political approach.”
The Sanders clip was posted just days after Twitter labeled a video of Biden, similarly edited to look as if he was endorsing Trump’s reelection, as “manipulated media,” and Facebook published a warning that called the video “partly false.” It was one of the first instances of social media platforms deploying new policies meant to curb political misinformation released by a 2020 candidate.
By Tuesday afternoon, the most widely shared versions of the deceptively edited Sanders video had been viewed more than 600,000 times on Twitter, with most of the traffic coming by way of Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative group Turning Point USA.
A Twitter spokesperson said the tweet would not be labeled under their synthetic and manipulated media policy “as the alteration does not completely distort the meaning of his answer.”
NBC News Exit Poll: Primary voters prioritize beating Trump but levels differ by preferred candidate
Democratic primary voters continue to say nominating a candidate who can beat Donald Trump was a more important factor in their votes than supporting someone who agrees with them on major issues, according to the NBC News Exit Poll.
Across Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri and Washington, 61 percent said they prioritized beating Trump and 36 percent said they prioritized issues, the NBC News Exit Poll found. This is nearly identical to exit poll results from prior contests, which showed 63 percent prioritized defeating Trump while 34 percent preferred issue alignment.
Among supporters of Biden in today’s primaries, 71 percent prioritized defeating Trump, which is identical to the views of his supporters in earlier contests. Among Bernie Sanders voters, only 46 percent prioritized beating Trump, which is down slightly from prior contests.
The number of Democratic primary voters today who prioritized beating the incumbent ranged from 69 percent in Washington, to 59 percent in Missouri, 57 percent in Michigan and 53 percent in Mississippi.
Check out anonymous voter confessions from tonight's primary states
NBC News Exit Poll: Mississippi has highest share of black voters in Democratic contests so far
As Sanders and Biden square off in Mississippi tonight, the electorate is shaping to be one of the most racially diverse of the Democratic contests so far. According to early NBC News Exit Polls, black voters make up roughly two-thirds of those casting ballots in the Mississippi primary — higher than the share of black voters in South Carolina, Alabama and Virginia.
Biden picked up considerable momentum in the 2020 primary race after a landslide victory in the South Carolina Democratic primary, which came thanks to a resounding surge of support from the state’s sizable African American electorate.
He was also favored heavily among black voters in the South in Super Tuesday’s primaries: 65 percent of black voters in South Carolina, Alabama, Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee cast votes for the former vice president. Smaller shares favored Sanders (16 percent) or Bloomberg (9 percent).
NBC News Exit Poll: Most Washington primary voters are concerned with the coronavirus outbreak
The NBC News Exit Poll finds the vast majority of Democratic primary voters in Washington are concerned about the coronavirus outbreak. This includes 38 percent who are very concerned and 44 percent who are somewhat concerned.
Voters age 45 and over (46 percent) are more likely than those under 45 years old (20 percent) to be very concerned about coronavirus.
The exit poll also asked Washington primary voters which candidate they would trust most to handle a major crisis.
Among those who trust Joe Biden more, 46 percent are very concerned about the outbreak. Among those who trust Bernie Sanders more, just 26 percent are very concerned.
According to the CDC, Washington state has the largest number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the nation. It is not clear what impact the outbreak has had on turnout since the Washington primary election is conducted almost entirely by mail.
Man intentionally crashes car into St. Louis polling station, police say
A man intentionally backed his car into a St. Louis polling station on Tuesday and then started throwing liquid on voting machines, police said.
Arlice Thompson, a 60-year-old St. Louis resident and poll worker, told NBC News she was helping a voter check in around 9:30 a.m. CT at Friendly Temple Missionary Church when “we heard this loud boom.”
“We thought something had exploded outside the building,” she said.
She said a man in his sixties had crashed his car into the side of the church and walked inside yelling obscenities. He then poured an unknown liquid from a gallon milk jug onto the floor and voting machines and started throwing chairs and tables around as witnesses called police.
The man was taken in custody and transported to a hospital for evaluation, according to the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. There were no injuries.
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NBC News Exit Poll: Enthusiasm for Biden and Sanders as eventual nominee differs by state
Four in 10 primary voters in Missouri, Michigan and Washington would be satisfied if either Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders ended up as the Democratic nominee for president, according to early results from the NBC News Exit Polls in those states.
Among those who would only be happy with one of these outcomes, 1 in 3 would be satisfied with Biden as the party standard bearer and 1 in 5 would be satisfied only if it was Sanders.
Levels of enthusiasm for each candidate are different across the states.
In Missouri, more primary voters say they would be enthusiastic with Biden (45 percent) as the nominee than say the same about Sanders (31 percent). The reverse is true in Michigan with 38 percent enthusiastic about nominating Sanders and 32 percent saying the same about Biden. This result is evenly divided in Washington at 35 enthusiastic about Biden as the nominee and 35 percent enthusiastic if it is Sanders.
Even as some hold their noses, Detroit voters cast ballots with 'the ancestors' on their minds
Davinia Brown said she's been alarmed by the "really chaotic" Democratic primary. She hated watching the sniping and barbs when the campaign trail was crowded with candidates.
"They just looked so terrible going after each other," she said.
Brown is also not sure that votes will be tallied fairly this year since she believes foul play might have "rigged" the 2016 election in favor of President Donald Trump.
But she wouldn't consider staying home on primary election day — and she wouldn't let her son stay home either.
"The ancestors fought so we have to vote," said Brown, 51, as she and her son Raymond Brown, 25, cast their ballots Tuesday morning at the Horatio Williams Foundation in Detroit's Lafayette Park, just east of downtown. (He voted for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; she declined to name her pick).
"The ancestors stood in line," said Brown, an African-American human resources professional who lives in Lafayette Park. "They were beat. They had to take tests to vote."
"It's very important that we vote even though we believe that they're going to put whoever they want in office," she added.
A lower African-American turnout in 2016 compared to 2012, when President Barack Obama was on the ballot, is often mentioned as a key reason why Trump won Michigan by an 11,000-vote margin in 2016.
Brown doesn't think black voters will stay home this year since Trump is unpopular in Detroit and voters here learned their lesson, she said. "They've had an opportunity to witness things for themselves.
Rev. William Revely, 78, the African-American pastor of the Holy Hope Heritage Baptist Church on Detroit's west side, was casting his ballot "for Uncle Joe," meaning former Vice President Joe Biden, at an elementary school near his home in Lafayette Park.
He says his church has "several hundred" members who will be voting in large numbers this year.
"Folks have had enough of" Trump," Revely said. "They're going to turn out and the vote is going to be stronger this time."
Revely, who said he marched and protested during the civil rights movement, says he drives home the importance of voting with young people in his congregation.
"We went through too much to get the vote," he said.
Biden and Sanders seen as far more 'honest' than Clinton was in 2016: poll
Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are both viewed by most Americans as honest, unlike Hillary Clinton around this time in 2016, according to new Quinnipiac poll data.
Fifty-one percent of Americans say Biden is honest, while 38 percent say he's not, according to the new survey released Monday. Sanders performed better, with 62 percent of Americans saying he's honest and 26 percent saying he's not.
By contrast, a Quinnipiac poll released in mid-February of 2016 found that Clinton was seen by just 30 percent of Americans as honest, while 67 percent said she was not.
The perception that Clinton was dishonest and untrustworthy dogged her throughout the 2016 campaign. Her numbers were even worse than then-candidate Donald Trump — 37 percent of Americans said four years ago that Trump was honest, while 59 percent said he was not.
Though it's still early, the new findings indicate that the Democratic nominee this fall won't have the same problem against Trump. The new poll found that his numbers are slightly worse today — just 33 percent of Americans say Trump is honest, while 63 percent say he's not.
Biden hurls curse word at worker who challenges him on guns
DETROIT — Former Vice President Joe Biden told a factory worker he was “full of s---” at a campaign event here after the man claimed the Democratic presidential candidate was going to take away his guns.
The heated altercation happened during a meet-and-greet with workers at a Fiat Chrysler assembly plant ahead of Michigan's crucial primary. While supporters were waiting in line, Biden was immediately confronted by a worker who claimed the former vice president would try to do away his Second Amendment right after seeing videos of him and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, talking gun control.
“You’re full of s---,” Biden said. “I did not.”
Washington state has advantage in addressing voters' virus fears
Washington, which had the first confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the U.S., has a major advantage in addressing fears the virus could impact voting in Tuesday’s primary: it's a vote by mail state, and doesn't actually have physical polling places.
Nearly two dozen people have died in Washington, by far the most deaths recording in any state so far.
There are several new precautions in place, said Kylee Zabel, spokesperson for the Washington Secretary of State's office. Voters are discouraged from licking their envelopes, and should use "a wet sponge or cloth" instead, Zabel said, and election workers should wear gloves to open ballots.
Two other states vote by mail and don't use physical polling places: Colorado, which voted March 3, and Oregon, which votes May 19.
Don't expect to see Michigan primary results Tuesday
Michigan expects delays in reporting the results of its primary due to the huge backlog of absentee votes.
Since Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson took office last year, Michigan has expanded voting options for citizens, including giving all voters the option to vote by mail and later voter registration. That's led to the state sending off nearly a million absentee ballots for the 2020 primary, with more than 800,000 of them already returned. That number includes the 36,574 ballots that were already spoiled, meaning people who voted early for a candidate who has dropped out can get their vote back.
But under Michigan law, absentee ballots can't even be opened until Election Day morning, leading to fears of long delays before precincts can produce a final count. "Current state law hasn't really caught up," said Jake Rollow, a spokesperson for Benson's office.
Many jurisdictions have responded by setting up "absentee voting counting boards," separate locations where poll workers and reps from each party are devoted to processing absentee ballots all day, Rollow said.
It's election day in Detroit, but it doesn't look like it
DETROIT — As voters in Michigan's largest city started arriving at schools and community centers to vote in the state's presidential primary on Tuesday, many were greeted by, well, not very much.
The area in front of polling places is typically busy and colorful on primary election day, as volunteers post signs and banners for their favorite candidates and greet voters with flyers in hopes of winning last-minute support.
But the lack of local races, the fact that Michigan recently changed its laws to allow voters to cast absentee ballots for any reason, and the recent drop in the number of candidates still vying for the Democratic presidential nomination left many polling places in Detroit eerily quiet.
An NBC reporter visited six polling places on the east side of Detroit on Tuesday morning and saw just one person outside of one of them — and she was working for a data company conducting an exit poll.
The rest had little more than a sign that read "Vote Here," with no campaign volunteers or workers in sight.
"You're only looking at the Democratic Party and there's only two left, three left," said election worker Aaron Taylor, 53, referring to the remaining Democratic presidential candidates. "So there's no need to really be out here for that."
Taylor, who was taking a cigarette break outside the polling place at Detroit's Bunche Preparatory Academy, a public elementary school, said turnout has been "moderate" at his precinct. But he predicted the activity outside his poling place will return for the general election.
"I'm pretty sure come November they'll be out here," he said.
ANALYSIS: Why Sanders' uphill battle gets steeper as six states vote Tuesday
It's not Super Tuesday, but there are six more Democratic contests coming up Tuesday. Joe Biden comes to them with a lead over Bernie Sanders in the overall delegate count, thanks to his victories in 10 states last week.
Now, Biden has an opportunity to build on his advantage, while Sanders is desperately seeking to put some headline-grabbing wins on the board.
Here's a look at the state of play in Tuesday's battlegrounds.
Why Biden's chance of beating Sanders is even bigger than it seems
In a matter of 72 hours, Joe Biden parlayed a dominant victory in South Carolina into a steamrolling performance on Super Tuesday: He not only won substantially African American electorates like Alabama's and Virginia's, but he also carried Texas and scored huge coups by winning Massachusetts, Minnesota and Maine — all states thought to be favorable to Bernie Sanders.
And Biden did so without much of a personal, TV or field presence in any of them.
According to the latest NBC News projection, Biden leads Sanders by 513 to 461 in pledged delegates, with 105 for other candidates (1,991 are required to win the nomination). There are still millions of votes to count in California in the coming days, giving Sanders room to grow. But Biden's total will also grow as his best states are certified and delegates are awarded based on the results calculated in each congressional district.
Here are three reasons the former vice president is amassing what could be an insurmountable delegate lead.
How Bernie Sanders can stay competitive with wins in Michigan, Washington
5 things to watch on Super Tuesday II: Sanders' revolution faces a reckoning
Super Tuesday resurrected Joe Biden’s campaign and powered him into a delegate lead. Super Tuesday II must revive Bernie Sanders or the nomination could slip away from him again.
A new CNN poll shows Biden leading Sanders by a margin of 52 percent to 36 percent in a two-person race. The biggest dividing line is age — voters under 45 said they prefer Sanders by nearly 2-to-1, while voters 45 or older picked Biden by more than 4-to-1.
That generational gap looms over another big day of voting Tuesday, with Democratic voters in Michigan, Idaho, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota and Washington set to deliver their verdict on who the party’s nominee to take on President Donald Trump should be. It’s also the last day for Democrats living abroad to participate in the primary.
Tuesday's primary states brace for strong turnout, hope to avoid long lines
The six states voting in the primaries and caucuses Tuesday are bracing for a strong turnout after some voters in California and Texas waited hours in long lines to cast their ballots.
Election officials and experts are hoping that with less new technology, more paper-based methods and early and absentee voting options, the states — Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Washington, and North Dakota — have fewer bottlenecks. But other changes may delay reporting of the results.
“We do not anticipate unusually long lines in the March 10 states, primarily due to variables such as voting methods, state sizes and the absence of major process changes such as the introduction of Vote Centers,” Eddie Perez, an election administration analyst with the technology group OSET Institute, said in an email.
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Sanders and Biden scrap on the airwaves in Tuesday's states
WASHINGTON — It may not be super, but as the Democratic race hits the latest round of contests today, Joe Biden is looking to replicate his strong showing on last week's Super Tuesday and widen his delegate lead over Bernie Sanders.
The Sanders campaign is outspending Biden on the TV and radio airwaves across the six states that hold their nominating contests today — $2.9 million to Biden's almost $2.2 million, according to Advertising Analytics. But Biden's effort has been boosted by spending from his allied super PAC, Unite the Country.
Both campaigns are spending the most in Michigan — Sanders and Biden have spent about $1.2 million each, with Unite the Country spending another almost $400,000.
The Biden campaign and his super PAC have also run ads in Missouri and Mississippi, but neither have spent a cent on TV or radio ads in Washington, Idaho and North Dakota.
The Sanders campaign, by comparison, has gone up on the airwaves in all six states voting Tuesday.
Sanders' top ad across these states, according to Advertising Analytics data, is one that attacks Biden on social security by using audio from a speech in 1995 where he called for a spending freeze across the government. His campaign has spent more than $644,000 to air the ad in states holding votes on Tuesday.
The Biden campaign has bristled at those attacks, and has spent almost $200,000 in those states on ads that criticize Sanders for going negative and argue Biden has said he'd expand Medicare and Social Security.
Biden's top ads in the states voting Tuesday are different versions of the same spot, which feature former President Obama's praise of Biden as "an extraordinary man with an extraordinary career in public service."
And Unite Our Country has spent $376,000 in these states on a spot that quotes Biden talking about his campaign, and includes some brief swipes at Sanders (Biden is quoted int he ad saying he wants to "build on ObamaCare" instead of scrapping it, and "Democrats want a nominee who is a Democrat").
FIRST READ: Sanders defied the odds in Michigan once before. A replay might be much harder.
Four years ago, Bernie Sanders shocked the political world and defied the public polling by winning the Michigan primary — even though he was unable to change the overall delegate math.
But here are three reasons why Sanders winning Michigan tonight on this Above-Average Tuesday would be an even bigger surprise than it was in 2016.
Bill de Blasio wants Warren to endorse Sanders
Kansas City's mayor says he got turned away from his polling place
Missouri has experienced minor technical issues as its primary election is underway.
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas tweeted a video that he had been turned away at the polls this morning. "I wasn’t in the system even though I’ve voted there for 11 years, including for myself four times!" he wrote.
But that was the result of a simple user error, Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft told NBC News.
"He's in the system. He's registered. He has been registered. The poll worker misspelled his name," Ashcroft said.
Missouri does not require voters to present identification when voting, but Ashcroft said he recommended voters present them to avoid misspellings.
Other voters reported glitches that prevented them from voting normally.
Adam Rygiol, 34, said that even though registration tablets at his polling location in Jackson County, MO, recognized he was eligible to vote, he and another man couldn't complete their ballot normally, and had to sign provisional ballots.
"My understanding is that some of those tablets were not communicating with each other between 6:00 and 6:30" in Jackson and St. Louis Counties, Ashcroft said, but that affected voters could vote provisionally, and that the problem had since been resolved.
What the polls show for Biden and Sanders in Michigan and elsewhere
Democratic voters in six states will make their choices for president known Tuesday, when more than 350 delegates are at stake.
Joe Biden has been rising in the polls since his Super Tuesday surge — when he won 10 states, building on a decisive victory in South Carolina — but Bernie Sanders will compete in several states that handed him victories in 2016.
Everything you need to know about Tuesday's primaries
There are primaries in Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri and Washington and caucuses in North Dakota on Tuesday, and the results in most of the states should be known within hours of the polls closing — 8 p.m. ET for the earliest states and 11 p.m. ET for the latest.