538: How Is Joe Biden Remaking The 2016 Primary Map?

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The 2020 Democratic primary is on the backburner. Many states have postponed their primaries because of the spread of the coronavirus, but there isn’t much question as to who will win the nomination.

For all intents and purposes, former Vice President Joe Biden is now the presumptive nominee. He has amassed a more or less insurmountable lead in the pledged delegate count, 1,201 to Sen. Bernie Sanders’s 888, according to ABC News. And he’s done it by winning places Sanders won handily in 2016 and even overperforming Hillary Clinton in some areas she won four years ago.

So let’s take a deep dive into Biden’s map so far and look at where he’s outperformed Clinton and where he’s gained ground from Sanders. We dug into county-level data for the 18 states that have already held primaries1 and compared their 2020 and 2016 results.

Bottom line: Biden held onto much of the turf that Clinton won in 2016, but he also captured a lot of territory that Sanders carried four years ago. We found that much of Biden’s success can be explained by his dominance in areas with larger shares of white voters without a college degree. Biden has also done better among college-educated white voters than Sanders has in 2020 and better in rural areas than Clinton did in 2016.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-is-joe-biden-remaking-the-2016-primary-map/