Joe Biden was projected to take Virginia and front-runner Bernie Sanders was declared the winner in his home state of Vermont as polls closed in those two states on Tuesday, the biggest day of voting in the Democratic presidential nominating race.
Edison Research and television networks quickly projected the split results in the first two states to close their polls on Super Tuesday, when Americans in 14 states voted for a Democratic challenger to Republican President Donald Trump in the Nov. 3 election.
A resurgent Biden, former President Barack Obama's vice president, has enjoyed a burst of momentum since his blowout win in South Carolina on Saturday, with a flood of prominent party officials and former rivals endorsing his candidacy.
Biden is hoping to muscle aside upstart Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former New York City mayor, and consolidate support from moderates in Tuesday's voting, turning the race into a one-on-one contest against Sanders.
Opinion polls have shown Biden gaining on Sanders, a democratic socialist and independent U.S. senator from Vermont who hopes to take a huge step toward winning the nomination on Tuesday. More than one-third of the delegates who will pick the eventual nominee in July are up for grabs on Super Tuesday.
Early exit polls by Edison Research showed relatively few voters in biggest voting state California and second-biggest Texas, about two in 10, made up their minds in the last few days, which could minimize Biden's recent momentum.
But in Virginia and Massachusetts, about half of voters decided recently while one third of voters in North Carolina decided in the last few days, the polls showed.
A majority of voters in the Super Tuesday states said they were mostly looking for a candidate who can beat Trump, instead of someone who shares their values, the exit polls said.
Biden is trying to build a bridge between progressive Democrats' desire for big structural change and more moderate Democrats yearning for a candidate who will be able to win over enough independents and Republicans to oust Trump.
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That effort gained fresh momentum on the eve of Tuesday's voting as moderate presidential rivals Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, endorsed Biden after withdrawing from the race.
Bloomberg remains a wild card as he joins the competition for the first time. The moderate skipped the first four contests and spent more than $500 million of his own money to bombard Super Tuesday and later voting states with ads, but has seen his poll numbers slip after a poor first debate.
Asked by a reporter in Miami if he thought he risked spoiling Bidens chances of winning the nomination, Bloomberg responded: You think Im going to siphon (votes) from him? Hes siphoning them from me.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren, who was briefly the front-runner in the race last year, also remains in the hunt and hopes to score a victory in her home state of Massachusetts. Opinion polls show her trailing in other states.
The pace of the Democratic race begins to accelerate after Super Tuesday, with 11 more states voting by the end of March. By then, nearly two-thirds of the delegates will have been allotted.
Sanders headed into Tuesday with 60 delegates to Biden's 54 in the state-by-state nominating fight. Sanders managed a virtual tie with Buttigieg in Iowa and wins in New Hampshire and Nevada.
Besides leading in polls in California, Sanders also is ahead of Biden by a smaller margin in polls in Texas. Sanders' strength with Hispanics should pay dividends in that state, where Latinos comprise one-third of the Democratic electorate.
Biden, whose South Carolina win affirmed his popularity with black voters, hopes to win five states where African Americans make up at least a quarter of the Democratic electorate: Alabama, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee and Arkansas.
Other states voting on Tuesday are Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Oklahoma and Utah. The U.S. territory of American Samoa was holding a caucus contest, and Democrats living abroad began voting in a primary set to run until March 10.
The first polls will close in Vermont and Virginia at 7 p.m. EST (midnight GMT). The last will close in California at 8 p.m. PST (0400 GMT on Wednesday).
The next contests, on March 10, will be in Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota and Washington state.
