Clinton Has Massive Leads In Key Super Tuesday States, Polls Show

Doug Mataconis · Sunday, February 28, 2016 · 1 comment

A series of new polls shows the extent to which last night’s results in South Carolina were very much a harbinger of how Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders stand to do on Super Tuesday, especially in the south:

First up, there’s a new series of battleground polls from CBS News that shows Clinton with the large leads you’d expect in states with substantial African-American populations:

In Georgia, Clinton leads Sanders 63% to 35%;
In Virginia, Clinton leads Sanders 59% to 39%; and,
In Texas, Clinton leads Sanders 61% to 37%

The results are similar in the new NBC News battleground polls:

In Georgia, Clinton leads Sanders 64% to 30%;
In Texas, Clinton leads Sanders 59% to 38%; and,
In Tennessee, Clinton leads Sanders 59% to 38%

Not surprisingly, in all four states it is Clinton’s lead among African-American and other minority voters that bears a good part of the responsibility for Clinton’s large lead over Sanders in these states, and it’s likely the same is true in other southern states that will be voting on March 1st such as Alabama and Arkansas, the last of which is likely a state that will be very generous to Clinton in any case given her long ties to the state as a former First Lady. While these are hardly the only states that will be up on Tuesday, they are among those with the largest amount of delegates at stake, and they suggest that Clinton will go a long way toward shutting the door to any real challenge from Sanders, such as it still exists, by the time we wake up on Wednesday morning.