Super Tuesday: With just over four hours to go before the counts begin Biden opens big gap in the betting

Super Tuesday: With just over four hours to go before the counts begin Biden opens big gap in the betting

To give an idea of the sheer scale of tonight’s primary elections a total of 1,344 will be decided compared with the 1,991 pledged delegates that will be required to win the Democratic nomination on the first ballot.

This is probably the biggest single day of primaries ever and turnout is expected to be high across the 14 states involved.

The polls close in Vermont, Virginia and in Alabama at midnight UK time and we should start getting local results soon afterwards

In anticipation of a Biden boost the betting markets have moved to him sharply. I just wonder whether that will hold through the night.

One thing that might sound counterintuitive is that the withdrawal of Buttigieg and Klobuchar is going to make a contested convention more likely rather than less. The reason is that in each state race a contender has to chalk up 15% or more of the votes in order to acquire delegates. With the two withdrawals this looks set to make it easier for Warren, Bloomberg and possibly Biden to reach the threshold in states where they were in the low teens.

Mike Smithson

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