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Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden is looking for another strong showing Tuesday in six more Democratic presidential primaries against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, as the two candidates vie to oppose President Donald Trump in November's national election.
Biden won 10 of the 14 party primaries last week over Sanders. Advance polling shows him doing well in the Midwestern state of Michigan, the country's auto manufacturing hub, where 125 delegates are at stake to the party's national nominating convention in July, the biggest prize in Tuesday's voting.
The political polling also shows Biden, in his third run for the presidency over three decades, doing better or even with Sanders, a self-declared democratic socialist, in the five other states with Democratic primaries: Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Idaho and Washington. The five states and Democrats living overseas collectively control another 240 delegates to the national convention.
Sanders won Michigan's 2016 primary over former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who went on to lose the 2016 election to Trump. But numerous polls in recent days show Sanders trailing Biden by double-digit margins in Michigan.
The growing threat of the coronavirus illness in the U.S. disrupted the presidential campaign for the first time, with both Biden and Sanders canceling large rallies Tuesday night in Cleveland, Ohio, one of the biggest cities in a state set to vote March 17.
The formerly long list of Democratic presidential candidates thinned markedly in the last 10 days, with challengers to Biden and Sanders dropping out of the contest just ahead of Super Tuesday voting a week ago or just after failing to win any states.
Gone from the race are former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Super Tuesday voting a week ago started a string of three straight weeks of Democratic contests, with multiple states voting after February contests in four states voting one at a time - Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.
Biden lost the first three of the states in February, but scored a resounding win in South Carolina, boosting him to even more success a week ago, even as Sanders won the country's biggest state, California.
"You know, just over a week ago, the press and the pundits had declared the campaign dead," Biden told a crowd Monday in Detroit, Michigan's biggest city. "Then South Carolina spoke. Then Super Tuesday spoke, and the turnout was incredible. And now (Tuesday), Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Idaho, Washington State, you will be heard. And Michigan, I'm counting on you in a big way."
Biden entered Tuesday leading with 670 pledged national convention delegates so far, ahead of Sanders' 574 delegates, according to delegate trackers, with 1,991 needed to claim the nomination at the Democratic National Convention in July.
Sanders says his progressive campaign is what the country needs more than the moderate positions of Biden, and that he is the best challenger to Trump in the national election eight months from now.
"My point here is to ask you to think that in a general election, which candidate can generate the enthusiasm and excitement and the voter turnout we need?" Sanders asked his supporters in Missouri. "So, if you want to defeat Trump, which all Democrats do, and a majority of independents and some Republicans do, we are that campaign."
Biden and Sanders are scheduled to debate each other next Sunday ahead of the March 17 primary elections in Florida, Illinois, Ohio and Arizona.