Will the Coronavirus Take Down Trump’s Reelection Campaign?

4. The Florida primary

An even more dagger-y dagger to Bernie Sanders.

If you thought Michigan was a blow for Sanders, wait until you see what’s shaping up in Florida next week. The state awards 219 pledged delegates, nearly 100 more than Michigan did, and it’s one of Sanders’ absolute worst. He lost it by 30 percentage points to Clinton in 2016, and he is trailing Biden in the latest polling average by about 45. Florida’s primary electorate is older and more moderate, favoring Biden off the bat. Even worse, Sanders’ relative strength with Hispanic voters in previous states doesn’t translate to Florida, where Latino voters—and not just Cuban Americans—flinch at the “socialist” label. A University of North Florida poll released this week, for example, showed Sanders earning only 28 percent of Hispanic voters’ support to Biden’s 65 percent. There are a lot of reasons for the Sanders campaign to regret that week between the Nevada caucuses and the South Carolina primary, when he had the opportunity to reach out to moderate voters and call for unity and, instead, spent the week babbling about his admiration for Fidel Castro’s literacy programs. That error will look particularly acute this coming Tuesday night. Also: Illinois, Ohio, and Arizona vote on Tuesday too, and there’s no good reason to expect Sanders to win any of those states, either.

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