Impact2020: March 18, 2020

Welcome to your Impact2020 briefing for Wednesday, March 18. Joe Biden had a great primary night, but with future elections being postponed due to the coronavirus, what does this mean for the rest of the primary? Let’s explore.

On the Ground

‘A quasi-hiatus’

Joe Biden is well on his way to becoming the Democratic presidential nominee after easily defeating Bernie Sanders in the Florida, Illinois and Arizona primary elections on Tuesday night. Now the campaign is frozen, with no elections or public events on the immediate horizon.

“A race that has moved at a breakneck pace this year is about to go on a quasi-hiatus, thanks to a global outbreak of the coronavirus that has disrupted most facets of American life and forced government leaders and campaign officials to rethink how they conduct elections,” McClatchy’s Alex Roarty and David Catanese report.

The candidates will also have to rethink how they push for votes, as they campaign virtually … all virtual. As Steve Schale, a veteran Florida-based Democratic operative and strategist for a pro-Biden super PAC, put it: “There’s no playbook for this.”

Voting during a health crisis

More Democratic voters turned out for Florida’s 2020 Democratic presidential primary than in 2016, Alex Daugherty and David Smiley report for the Miami Herald.

“Election Day turnout in Florida was down significantly from 2016, as a lack of a competitive GOP primary, surging vote-by-mail totals and the coronavirus all kept voters away from the polls on Tuesday,” they noted. But Florida Democrats voted early by mail in record numbers.

It was a similar story in Arizona. “Despite all the challenges an emerging virus caused for this election, turnout surpassed the 2016 presidential preference election, largely due to an increase in early ballots, according to the Arizona Democratic Party,” Rachel Leingang writes for the Arizona Republic.

But in Illinois, voter turnout suffered. “Turnout was down significantly compared to the primary four years ago,” Bill Ruthhart and Rick Pearson report for the Chicago Tribune. “Turnout in Chicago hovered around 30% compared to 53% in 2016 while about 26% of voters in suburban Cook voted.”

You’ve got mail

To avoid low rates of participation moving forward, states with upcoming elections are encouraging voting by mail. Kansas Democratic Party officials aren’t making any changes to the May 2 presidential primary yet, instead urging voters to mail in their ballots. All registered Democrats will automatically be mailed ballots at the end of March.

Jonathan Shorman of the Wichita Eagle notes that “the emphasis on mail-in voting could alter the makeup of the Democratic electorate,” with Kansas Democrats using ranked-choice voting for the first time.

That’s likely to matter less now with fewer candidates. The decision to hold the primary later, however, seems to have paid off for Kansas Democrats. Shorman reports that it “helped give the state a 20% bonus in the number of delegates to the national convention.”

Trail Mix

March Madness

• “Look, we can all look back and say, ‘I wish I’d done that’ ... but that’s when we made that decision. And that’s where we are today,” Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine told reporters after Tuesday’s primary was postponed in the 11th hour. He’s “open to discussion” on a possible mail-in primary, the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Rich Exner reports.

Battle for Congress

• Marie Newman defeated Rep. Dan Lipinski of Illinois in Tuesday’s Democratic congressional primary. The victory “ended nearly four decades of Lipinski family control” of the 3rd district, which includes the southwest suburbs of Chicago. Todd Lighty, Robert McCoppin, Stacy St. Clair and Christy Gutowksi have more for the Chicago Tribune.

• Jon Ossoff leads the Senate Demcoratic primary in Georgia with 31% according to a new Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll. However, 39% of voters are still undecided heading into the May 19 contest. The winner will face GOP Sen. David Perdue.

April Showers

• A Missouri court of appeals blocked the St. Louis County Election Board’s request to move the April 7 election to an April 28 mail-in election, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Mark Schlinkmann reports. The court also rejected the suggested option of combining it with the August 4 state primary election.

• Wisconsin voters have requested 173,000 absentee ballots ahead of the April 7 election, Riley Vetterkind of the Wisconsin State Journal reports. That number exceeds requests made in the last 3 of four elections, and it’s the most for a spring election since 2016.

• Meanwhile, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers “made his strongest case yet … for keeping the April 7 presidential primary in place, even as others called for postponing the election because of the coronavirus pandemic.” The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Patrick Marley and Daniel Bice have more.

• So far, the coronavirus has not affected Alaska’s April 4 primary since every registered Democrat has received a ballot in the mail. The state party is still planning “to offer in-person voting at a limited number of locations” and “urging voters to mail their ballots quickly,” James Brooks reports for the Anchorage Daily News.

Number of The Day

1,153

That’s how many delegates Biden has won so far in the Democratic primary, according to the Associated Press. Sanders has won 874 delegates. The magic number to win the nomination is 1,991.

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This story was originally published March 18, 2020 at 12:53 PM.