Welcome to The Lid from Meet the Press. I'm Carrie Dan. You know that feeling when you really should be planning something for the long term, but you're just way too busy right now to even think about it. You know, when you're like, I should really call about setting up that savings account, or, you know, we've really been meaning to finally clean out the garage.
But really, you just need to get through your daily life right now. Those dishes are not going to do themselves. Well, presidential campaigns can be a little bit like that. You're always supposed to be building and planning for the next thing on the calendar, but there is no future on the calendar unless you start winning now.
That's a problem that is particularly facing former Vice President Joe Biden, who has a big day coming up on Saturday and potentially a big problem a couple days after that. Here's what's going on. Biden really needs a big win in South Carolina to win back the confidence of establishment Democrats who are still thinking he might be the best bet to prevent Bernie Sanders from winning the Democratic nomination. And Biden might get it.
He's polling well in South Carolina. He's leading among African-American voters who make up about two thirds of the electorate there. And by polling well, I mean, he seems, if anything, to have maybe strengthened a little bit in South Carolina since Bernie Sanders overwhelmingly won the Nevada caucuses. So, okay, let's say Joe Biden does win by a convincing margin in South Carolina.
That's great for him. The question is, what happens next? Well, what's next is Super Tuesday. About a third of the total delegates are on the line in the following states.
Deep breath. Alabama, Arkansas, American Samoa, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia. Here's Biden's problem. He has been so busy trying to win what is, and I'm not throwing shade here, his first primary or caucus in his three runs for presidents that he just hasn't spent a lot of time building much of anything in Super Tuesday states.
He's just about to go up on television with a major ad buy, but compare that to Michael Bloomberg, who has spent somewhere north of $170 million in those states so far. Bernie Sanders has spent a lot less than that on TV about 11 million, but that's still a heck of a lot more than Biden and Sanders has at least a thousand paid staffers in all of those states, which is twice what Biden had, at least at the end of January. Even today, Biden is campaigning in South Carolina, which at the end of the day is only worth about 1% of delegates overall. But many of his main competitors are campaigning elsewhere.
Sanders is in North Carolina and Virginia. Michael Bloomberg analysts with Warren, both in Texas. Here's one thing that is going for Biden. He has universal name recognition among Democrats, and if he does well with Black voters on Saturday in South Carolina, it could bode well for Tuesday when he could rack up delegates in states with high Black populations, like Alabama and to a lesser extent, North Carolina and Virginia.
The bad news for Biden, he's still just playing catch up with the other candidates who have been investing more time and more resources in all those Super Tuesday states. So even if he gets a big win in South Carolina, he's still got to convert that momentum into races where he's just been badly outplayed so far. You know, but can't we all kind of relate to that, at least a little bit? I mean, it kind of makes my to-do list feel a little bit less daunting.
You know, mine is like laundry, groceries, not try to win California in five days. It's the little things, really. That's all for us. If you'd like to hear more of this free audio briefing, you can always download us on your favorite podcast app.