Joe Biden wins the Mississippi Democratic primary
- Former VP Joe Biden will win the Mississippi Democratic primary, Insider and Decision Desk HQ project.
- Biden was heavily favored to win in Mississippi due to his sweeping Super Tuesday victories in similar states where African-American voters make up a significant proportion of the electorate.
- Polls closed at 7 p.m. local time and 8 p.m. ET.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Former VP Joe Biden will win the Mississippi Democratic presidential primary, Insider and Decision Desk HQ project.
Polls in Mississippi closed at 7 p.m. Central Time and 8 p.m. Eastern.
Biden was heavily favored to win in Mississippi due to his sweeping Super Tuesday victories in similar Southern states where African-American voters make up a substantial proportion of the Democratic primary electorate and powered him to victory.
According to exit polling from the March 3 Super Tuesday contests, Biden won 72% of black voters in Alabama, 63% in Virginia, and approximately 60% in both Texas and North Carolina, two of the most delegate-rich states of Super Tuesday.
As FiveThirtyEight noted this week, exit polls from the 2016 election revealed that about 71% of those who voted in the state's Democratic primary were African-American, which is an advantage for Biden.
A Data for Progress poll of Mississippi released on March 8 showed 77% of likely Mississippi Democratic primary voters supporting former VP Joe Biden compared to 22% who supported Sen. Bernie Sanders. The poll, conducted from March 4 to 7, had Biden leading well outside the margin of error of plus or minus five percentage points.
Mississippi allocates a total of 36 pledged delegates to the convention, making up a little under 1% of all the delegates allocated throughout the nomination process. Twenty-three delegates are allocated between the state's four congressional districts, with thirteen at-large and PLEO delegates allocated at the state level.
Read more coverage of today's primary elections:
LIVE UPDATES: See the full results of the March 10 Democratic primaries
LIVE UPDATES: See the full results of the Mississippi Democratic primary
LIVE UPDATES: See full results of Mississippi's US Senate and House primaries