This story was updated Wednesday at 11:20 am.
In a major blow to his presidential bid, Sen. Bernie Sanders has lost Michigan to former Vice President Joe Biden.
With all precincts reporting in Michigan, Biden claimed 53% of the vote to Sanders 36.38%. The former vice president also won Idaho with 48.8%, Mississippi with 81% and Missouri with 60%.
Sanders received 53.3% in North Dakota to win that contest and as of Wednesday morning Washington was still too close to call, with a virtual tie between both candidates —Sanders is currently in the lead with 32.75% to 32.54%.
After limping out of last week’s Super Tuesday contests with just four victories — including California and Vermont — Sanders failed to win over voters in Michigan, the top prize of the six March 10 primaries.
In the runup to the Michigan primary, polling had Biden winning by a wide margin, with the former vice president on average beating Sanders by 22 points.
In 2016, Sanders narrowly won the state, capturing 49.8% of the vote while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton received 48.3%. The two candidates split the 125 pledged delegates with the Vermont senator taking 67 and Clinton 63.
The day after Super Tuesday, on March 4, at his headquarters in Burlington, Vermont, Sanders was asked if Michigan was a must win for him in 2020. The Vermont senator waffled, responding that he wished he could “win all of the states” but that would be unrealistic.
“Look, we are going in there with the full expectation and the hope that we will win. Michigan is obviously an enormously important state, a state I feel very comfortable in,” Sanders said.
Heading into March 10, Biden led in pledged delegates with 670 but Sanders was close behind at 574. However, a win in Michigan was crucial for Sanders to remain in range of the surging Biden, and that failed to happen.
Before results trickled in Tuesday night, FiveThirtyEight was projecting that Biden would go into the Democratic National Convention in August with more than 2,000 delegates while Sanders would only manage around 1,300.
In a March 5 interview with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, Sanders said he would drop out of the race if Biden has a plurality of delegates entering the convention. Sanders added it would be unacceptable for superdelegates to select the candidate on a second ballot.
“Of course I’m going to drop out,” Sanders said. “He will win. We’ll run through — I suspect we will run through the process letting people have a right to vote, but if Biden walks into the convention or at the end of the process has more votes than me, he’s the winner.”
