Former Vice President Joe Biden easily won the Mississippi Democratic primary on Tuesday.
The Associated Press called the race for Biden as polls closed at 7:00 p.m. central.
With 14 percent of precincts reporting as of 8:16 p.m central, Biden was ahead of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) by a whopping 68 percent, 82 percent to 14 percent.
Biden is expected to take the lion’s share of the state’s 41 delegates to the Democratic National Convention, adding to his close to 100-delegate lead he had over Sanders in the race for the Democratic nomination for president going into the evening.
Biden’s final margin of victory is expected to be close to the 30 percent margin he secured when he won the South Carolina Democratic primary back on February 29.
Like South Carolina, African American voters historically make up more than half of the voters in Mississippi’s Democratic primaries.
Biden took an estimated 60 percent of the African American vote in South Carolina, and a similar pattern of voting behavior was seen in Mississippi on Tuesday.
The former vice president’s definitive win in Mississippi continued his string of Democratic primary victories in the South. In addition to Tuesday’s win in Mississippi and his momentum-changing victory in South Carolina, Biden racked up Super Tuesday Democratic primaries victories in Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and North Carolina.
Biden was also declared the victor on Tuesday’s Democratic primary in Missouri and even the battleground of Michigan shortly after polls closed in the midwestern state.
Results in three additional Democratic primary contests in Idaho, Washington, and North Dakota will be coming in as polls close in those states.
Next Tuesday, on March 17, four additional Democratic primary contests will be held in the key states of Florida, Ohio, Illinois, and Arizona.