Joe Biden just landed a big win
The news cycle hasn’t given it much attention, so you might not realize that Joe Biden scored another big win on Saturday night, after the state of Kansas held its first vote by mail primary. This isn’t a big surprise, of course, and it’s not likely that he’ll even be able to flip Kansas in the general election, which is usually a reliably red state and doesn’t award a whole lot of electoral votes anyway, but some important things stand out.
First of all, he didn’t just win – he took 77% of the popular vote and 29 delegates in the contest – meaning he did even better than when he won in Ohio earlier last week, suggesting that the phony scandals being drummed up by Twitter aren’t making much of a dent in his popularity – and they’re also not making people much more enthusiastic to cast their votes for Bernie Sanders instead, who already endorsed Biden but gave his remaining supporters permission to vote for him in the primaries ahead. Although the state collected mail-in ballots up until April 24, they also allowed for in-person voting on Saturday, May 2.
This is also a state where Sanders won overwhelmingly in 2016 against Hillary Clinton – 68% of the vote back when Kansas still had its caucus format. Now that it switched to a vote by mail primary format, the voter turnout actually tripled in size – 143,183 people cast a ballot in the primary, which could be a good sign for Kansas Democrats in the general election, as the state will be holding a Senate race where Trump ally Kris Kobach is likely to be the Republican nominee. No wonder Republicans are so against voting by mail.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making