Biden expands lead over Sanders in Democratic race, as Trump becomes presumptive GOP nominee

Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden is expanding his lead over Vermont's Senator Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary on Tuesday.

Biden will win Arizona, Illinois, and Florida, all of the three states holding a Democratic primary on Tuesday, according to projections by multiple U.S. media outlets.

The race in Florida, a battleground state for the 2020 presidential election, was a blowout for Biden. With about 93 percent of precincts reporting, he led Sanders by nearly 40 percentage points, according to CNN.

Speaking to supporters via livestream from Wilmington, Delaware, Biden said his campaign has "had a very good night."

"We moved closer to securing the Democratic Party's nomination for president, and we're doing it by building a broad coalition that we need to win in November," Biden said.

After a victory in Florida's GOP primary on Tuesday, sitting president Donald Trump has become the party's presumptive nominee for the 2020 presidential race, the Republican National Committee tweeted.

With Florida's 122 delegates to the Republican National Convention awarded to Trump, the incumbent has 1,330 delegates, above the 1,276 needed to win the Republican nomination, according to his reelection campaign.

Trump, who also won the Illinois GOP primary, is expected to formally become the Republican nominee at the party's national convention in Charlotte, North Carolina in August.

Arizona's Republican Party has canceled its caucuses so as to back Trump's re-election bid.

The primaries took place amid great concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic and growing public attention to the disease, which has left 108 people out of 6,362 confirmed cases dead in the United States as of Tuesday night and is disrupting the U.S. economy.

COVID-19 "will have a major impact on the election because it is likely to push America into a recession," Darrell West, director of governance studies at Brookings Institution, a Washington D.C.-based think tank, told Xinhua.

"Trump's major claim always has been the strong economy and it looks like he will lose that talking point," West added.

Ohio was scheduled to vote on Tuesday, but the day before, the state's health director ordered the closure of all polls due to the COVID-19 public health emergency. Four other states, including Maryland and Georgia, have also postponed their 2020 presidential primaries.

The Democratic National Committee said Tuesday that it urged "the remaining primary states to make voting easier and safer for both voters and election officials."

"The simplest way to ensure this is to make vote by mail available to all registered voters," the organization said. "We will continue to monitor the situation and work with the state parties to allow for flexibility around how states elect their delegates to the national convention once delegates are allocated based on primary or caucus results."

To win the Democratic presidential nomination, a candidate must receive support from a majority of the 3,979 pledged delegates on the first ballot of the Democratic National Convention, which election officials say must be at least 1,991 delegates.

As of Tuesday night, Biden had 1,121 delegates, compared to Sanders' 839, according to the Associated Press.

David Axelrod, director of the University of Chicago's Institute of Politics, said Tuesday night that it may be difficult for Sanders to catch up with Biden.

"At this point in 2008, Barack Obama was (ahead) of Hillary Clinton by 100 delegates. At the end of tonight, Joe Biden's lead will be 3X that," Axelrod tweeted. "No Dem has ever come back from anything like this deficit."

(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)