WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A resurgent Joe Biden rode a wave of momentum to win at least eight large states on Super Tuesday, but Bernie Sanders won the biggest prize of California to set up a long one-on-one battle for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Biden rolled to wins across the South, Midwest and New England on the biggest day of the Democratic campaign, as Americans in 14 states voted for a Democratic challenger to Republican President Donald Trump in the Nov. 3 election.
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“They don’t call it Super Tuesday for nothing,” Biden, the former vice president who had performed poorly in the first three nominating contests but broke through with a win in South Carolina, told roaring supporters in California.
“We are very much alive,” he said.
Sanders, the one-time front-runner who had hoped to take a big step toward the nomination on Tuesday, was projected by Edison Research to win in his home state of Vermont, Colorado and Utah. Fox News and AP projected Sanders won California.
Edison Research projected Biden the winner in Alabama, Arkansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Virginia.
More than one-third of the delegates who will pick the eventual nominee at a July convention were up for grabs in the primaries on Tuesday, which provided some clarity at last in a muddled race for the White House.
Without naming him, Sanders took direct aim at Biden during a rally with supporters in Vermont, criticizing his 2002 vote to authorize the war in Iraq and his support for global trade deals that Sanders opposed.
“We’re going to win the Democratic nomination and we are going to defeat the most dangerous president in the history of this country,