Pennsylvania Presidential Primary Critical For Biden, Sanders

PENNSYLVANIA - Before Super Tuesday, Pennsylvania's presidential primary promised to be its typically sleepy campaign exercise. Given that the state traditionally is among the last to hold its primary, a party’s nominee generally is all but determined by the time it occurs.

But former Vice President Joe Biden’s stunning Super Tuesday performance opened a rare window of relevance for Pennsylvania in the presidential primaries. The two-way fight between Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders means a hard-fought battle for the remaining delegates needed to clinch the nomination .

That battle is now virtually guaranteed to extend to the Keystone State.

“Usually we’re an afterthought in terms of presidential primaries,“ Christopher Borick, a political science professor and director of Muhlenberg College Institute of Public in Allentown, told Patch. “This year, Pennsylvania not only will be on the primary map, we’ll actually be a crucial state.”

With his campaign seemingly on life support, Biden won 10 states on Super Tuesday, including an upset win in delegate-rich Texas. Sanders won four, including California and his home state of Vermont.

Both Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg had dismal Super Tuesday performances and ended their campaigns, leaving the race solely to Biden and Sanders.

The delegate numbers game suggests that both Biden, a Scranton native, and Sanders will be very familiar with Philadelphia cheesesteaks and Pittsburgh Primanti Bros. sandwiches by late April.

Of the post-Super Tuesday primary states, Pennsylvania has the third-most convention delegates; its 186 delegates trail only New York’s 274 and Florida’s 219.

(In addition to the 186 who will commit to Biden or Sanders depending on the primary results, Pennsylvania also will have 24 superdelegates who are free to support any candidate at the Democratic Convention in Milwaukee in July.)

Another factor increasing Pennsylvania’s importance: Of the three “blue wall” states - Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin - that always voted Democratic in presidential campaigns for years until Trump won them in 2016, Pennsylvania will send the most delegates to the convention.

The race coalesced so quickly into a two-candidate affair that no polling has been done yet in a Biden-Sanders matchup in Pennsylvania. But previous polls have been taken on which of the two has the best chance to defeat President Trump in November.

The most recent, a Muhlenberg College-Morning Call of Allentown poll last month, gave a slight edge to Sanders. The survey had Sanders defeating Trump 49 percent to 47 percent in Pennsylvania, while Biden and the president were tied at 47 percent.

Borick cautioned not to put too much emphasis on the poll.

“I think it’s already a bit dated, to be honest,” he said. “The poll was taken at the height of Sanders’ success and Biden’s struggles. If you took the same poll today, the results could very well be different.”

Pennsylvania’s atypical prominence during presidential primary season might not be confined to 2020. A bill in the state Senate would change the primary date from the fourth Tuesday in April to the third Tuesday in March beginning in 2024. The switch would occur only in presidential election years.

“For many years, the selection of the presidential nominee has already been determined by the time Pennsylvania voters have gotten the opportunity to cast their ballot,” said Senator John Gordner, a Republican who represents portions of five northeastern Pennsylvania counties. “My bill will allow our citizens to play a much larger role in determining the outcome of these critical elections.”

For at least this year, that larger role is guaranteed.