Missouri primary could help preserve Biden's recent momentum

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — If presidential candidate Joe Biden is going to continue the momentum he gained by winning 10 states on Super Tuesday, Missouri figures to play an important role.

Missouri is among the more conservative of the six states holding Democratic primaries on Tuesday, a potential advantage for the former vice president in what has become essentially a head-to-head battle with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders — a self-proclaimed Democratic socialist.

Still, nothing is a given, even in a state where all but one of the statewide elected officials are Republicans. Sanders lost by less than 2,000 votes to eventual Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in Missouri in 2016.

Whoever wins the Missouri primary faces an uphill battle to carry the state in November against Republican President Donald Trump. The last Democrat to carry Missouri was President Bill Clinton in 1996. Barack Obama narrowly lost in Missouri in 2008, but since then the state has turned decidedly Republican. Mitt Romney carried Missouri by 9 percentage points in 2012. and Trump won the state by 19 percentage points on the way to victory in 2016.

Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, North Dakota and Washington also will hold primaries Tuesday.

Missouri was long considered a bellwether state until the recent trend. Missouri voted for the winning presidential candidate every time but once in the 1900s, missing only in 1956 when it picked Democrat Adlai Stevenson instead of Republican President Dwight Eisenhower.

Biden started as the early front-runner but was declared all but finished before rebounding with a much stronger than expected showing during last week's elections.

Biden and Sanders have been largely cordial. Biden, without naming Sanders, has taken aim at Sanders’ frequent contention that Biden is beholden to the party establishment.

Sanders, at a rally in St. Louis on Monday, shot back at those who say Biden is more electable, saying it’s the enthusiasm and excitement of his campaign that will bring out more voters in November to defeat Trump.

University of Missouri-St. Louis political scientist Dave Robertson said the surge toward Biden in the Midwest could indicate good things for the Democrats in November “because we might get a pattern with white working-class voters coming back to the Democrats to some extent."

“If Biden has a pretty big margin and it’s a big-time vote, it could indicate that white working-class voters are coming back to a moderate in the Democratic Party," he said.