Bernie Sanders drops out of the 2020 presidential race

Lloyd Bishop/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images; Samantha Lee/Business Insider

• Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is dropping out of the 2020 presidential race, his campaign announced in an email to supporters on Wednesday.
• His exit from the race makes former Vice President Joe Biden the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee in the race against President Donald Trump.
• Sanders built his campaign on transformative policies like universal healthcare, tuition-free public college, and the Green New Deal. He also secured early endorsements from influential progressive lawmakers.
• Sanders hit the ground running with huge wins in a series of early primary and caucus states as the campaign season kicked off.
• But he ultimately failed to pick up momentum on Super Tuesday and in later contests, where former Vice President Joe Biden crushed him, particularly among black voters and older voters.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont is dropping out of the 2020 presidential race, his campaign announced in an email to supporters on Wednesday.

Sanders' exit from the race makes former Vice President Joe Biden the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee in the race against President Donald Trump.

Sanders hit the ground running with a series of wins in early primary and caucus states as the campaign season kicked off, but he failed to pick up momentum on Super Tuesday, and subsequently lost key, delegate-rich states like Michigan and Florida to Biden, significantly narrowing his path to the nomination.

A veteran progressive lawmaker, Sanders built his campaign on calling for a "political revolution" and skewering the political establishment on both the left and right. His 2020 presidential bid built on his 2016 primary race against Hillary Clinton during which he established himself as the most prominent national voice for the populist, progressive left and an outspoken advocate for the working class.

Sanders has long championed policies like universal healthcare, tuition-free public college, and the Green New Deal, which is a plan to transition the US to 100% clean and renewable energy within the next decade.

The 78-year-old candidate gained steam from high-profile support from progressive lawmakers like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. Their endorsements came shortly after Sanders suffered a heart attack last fall - a potentially campaign-ending event - and gave him momentum at an essential moment in his campaign.

The Sanders campaign surged to the front of the Democratic pack with huge victories in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada. But the Vermont senator began losing steam after the South Carolina primary, in which he placed a distant second following Biden, who captured majority of the state's black voters.

Biden then quickly overtook the progressive firebrand when he won 10 out of 14 states on Super Tuesday.

A national Morning Consult poll released the Friday after Super Tuesday showed Biden crushing Sanders by 16 percentage points. More than half of the Democratic primary voters in the poll - 54% - said they would vote for Biden, while 38% said they would vote for Sanders.

Sanders pivoted most of his ground operation to crucial midwestern states like Michigan following Super Tuesday as a last-ditch effort to resurrect his campaign. But the former vice president demolished Sanders in several states - including Michigan - on March 10.

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y) and Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) stand together during his campaign event at the Whittemore Center Arena on February 10, 2020 in Durham, New Hampshire.

Sanders failed to boost youth turnout

Demographically, Michigan was tailor-made for a Sanders victory. It's a Midwestern state with a large blue-collar population, which Sanders targeted with his populist message. The Vermont senator also clinched a narrow victory in Michigan in 2016 in a stunning upset over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

But Sanders suffered from low turnout among young voters in the 2020 campaign season.

Voters between the ages of 18 and 29 were a huge part of why he picked up momentum in 2016, and the Vermont senator conceded that the young voter turnout this time around wasn't enough to help him secure the Democratic nomination.

Indeed, the drop-off in young voter turnout on Super Tuesday was one of the primary reasons Sanders saw underwhelming results across the board.

"Have we been as successful as I would hope in bringing in young people in? And the answer is no," Sanders said at a press conference the day after Super Tuesday.

On March 10, Ocasio-Cortez appeared to concede Sanders' defeat in the primary during an Instagram livestream watched by about 8,000 people.

But the congresswoman declared "generational" victory, arguing that the future of the party supports the kind of radical change she and Sanders are pushing for and has already won "enormous, decisive arguments on many, many issues."

Ocasio-Cortez urged her supporters not to lose hope in electoral politics and declared cynicism the "number one enemy" of progressive change.

"Never, ever, ever let your heart turn black," she said.

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