The first polling places close at 7 pm ET; in Arizona, the last polls will close at 10 pm ET.
Despite a wave of cancellations and postponements in response to the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic — with everything from the NBA to Broadway on hold — at least three states are set to go forward their presidential primaries as scheduled this Tuesday, March 17.
Voters in Arizona, Florida, and Illinois will all vote in what is expected to be another good day for former Vice President Joe Biden.
In Ohio, however, Gov. Mike DeWine recommended Monday that in-person voting for the primary should not go forward as scheduled due to the coronavirus outbreak. According to Politico, the state is “supporting a lawsuit seeking to postpone in-person voting until June 2,” which puts Tuesday’s primary in serious doubt.
But while some primary contests might be on hold over the outbreak, one thing is clear. At this point, there are just two candidates with a real shot at claiming the Democratic nomination for president: Biden and progressive rival Sen. Bernie Sanders. (Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is technically still in the race, despite having claimed only two delegates.)
Almost 600 delegates will be up for grabs, making the March 17 primaries the third-biggest delegate haul of the race behind only Super Tuesday and a yet-to-come slew of Eastern seaboard races in April. Of the four states to vote, Florida is both the largest and the most Biden-friendly.
Here are the poll closing times, in Eastern time and local, listed alphabetically by state:
- Arizona: 9/10 pm ET, 7 pm local (Arizona is in Mountain time, but only portions of the state observe daylight saving time, which means that much of the state is three hours off Eastern time right now)
- Florida: 7 pm ET, 7 pm local
- Illinois: 8 pm ET, 7 pm local
- Ohio: 7:30 pm ET, 7:30 pm local (if the primary goes forward as scheduled)
Some states could be called soon after polls close on primary night: In Florida, for example, Biden holds a hefty polling lead that could indicate a quick resolution to that race.
And none of the states to vote on March 17 rely heavily on mail-in voting, which delayed results in California and Washington earlier this month.
Biden’s margin of victory could make all the difference
While polling isn’t prophecy, all signs point to a four-state sweep by Biden on Tuesday. He leads in the FiveThirtyEight state-level polling averages by 23.8 (Arizona), 41.2 (Florida), 30 (Illinois), and 24.9 (Ohio) points, and nothing from Sunday’s 11th Democratic debate would suggest that Sanders has been able to blunt the former vice president’s standing in the polls.
That means the key question for Sanders will be one of margins: Can he prevent Biden from claiming a mathematically insurmountable delegate lead in the primary?
Vox’s Andrew Prokop points out that March 17 might be a do-or-die moment for the Sanders campaign:
Overall, though, March 17 is the day where the delegate math for a Sanders comeback can change from implausible to near-impossible.
If Biden wins 60 percent of delegates on that day (about the same percentage he won this Tuesday), Sanders would then need to win 66 percent of all remaining delegates to catch up.
CNN’s Harry Enten, a senior politics analyst with a focus on polling, projects that Biden could net around 200 delegates on Tuesday — a crushing blow to Sanders’s nomination chances.
If Sanders doesn’t exit after Tuesday, however, you can expect a partially coronavirus-induced lull in the Democratic primary going forward. Georgia postponed its March 24 primary until May. And the next major delegate-awarding day isn’t until April 28 (though there could still be a handful of primaries, including the symbolically significant Wisconsin, in the interim).
But first, both candidates will have to see how things unfold on Tuesday.
Author: Cameron Peters
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