Bloomberg is banking on a delegate haul in Super Tuesday votes

WASHINGTON — Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is heading into Super Tuesday experiencing a plateau in polling, but showing no signs of slowing his presidential campaign spending spree as he vows to stay in the Democratic primary race “right to the bitter end.”

Political scientists contend recent polls signal trouble for Bloomberg’s insurgent quest for the nomination. After a shaky debate debut on Feb. 20, Bloomberg’s poll numbers have remained relatively unchanged compared to the steady climb he experienced before the Las Vegas debate.

Of the 14 states that will hold primaries on Tuesday, only polls in Oklahoma and Arkansas show Bloomberg in the lead, along with a tie for first in Virginia with current front runner, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

As Bloomberg and the other moderate Democrats in the race look to stop Sanders’ momentum, the billionaire and his campaign aides are continuing to publicly project an air of confidence that he will remain in the race past Tuesday’s critical vote.

“I am going to stay right to the bitter end, as long as I have a chance,” Bloomberg told MSNBC in a Thursday interview.

Bloomberg, who launched his self-financed campaign in late November, banking on a strategy that focuses on picking up enough delegates on Super Tuesday to make a case for the party’s nomination, told MSNBC he will remain in the race as long as Sanders does not secure a majority of delegates ahead of the Democratic National Convention this summer.

To lock in the nomination at the convention’s first floor vote, a candidate needs 1,991 delegates — making Super Tuesday, with 1,357 delegates up for grabs, a critical point in the race.

Delegates are allocated based on each candidate’s performance, with candidates only qualifying for delegates if they receive at least 15% support. Bloomberg and others are hoping to collect enough delegates to prevent Sanders from reaching a first-ballot majority. Sanders is leading in polls in the delegate rich states of California, Texas and North Carolina, according to the poll tracking website Real Clear Politics.

“I do think Super Tuesday is going to be completely definitional for this race … we’re looking forward to seeing what the results are,” Bloomberg campaign manager Kevin Sheekey said in a Thursday interview with MSNBC.

Bloomberg’s campaign bypassed the first four primary contests of the year, focusing instead on an all-out media blitz in the Super Tuesday states and building out a national campaign operation that so far employs 2,400 aides in 43 states.

When the field of Democratic presidential candidates were crisscrossing Iowa and New Hampshire wooing voters crowded into school gymnasiums and small-town diners, Bloomberg was flying to Arkansas, Alabama, California and Texas among other Super Tuesday states looking to get a head start with campaign events that featured catered food and free campaign gear.

Bloomberg has poured more than $500 million of his reported $60 billion fortune into TV and internet ads, according to the firm Advertising Analytics, dwarfing spending by the other Democrats, including former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana.

The initial surge in spending translated into a steady climb in polls that helped propel Bloomberg from single-digit support below 5% just before he entered the race to double-digit support in January and early February that allowed him to qualify for the Democratic debate stage.

Bloomberg’s campaign has looked to push past his widely criticized debate debut, arguing that if moderates don’t coalesce around one candidate Sanders will ultimately win the nomination as Bloomberg, Biden, Buttigieg and Klobuchar all split the party’s moderate voters.

“Clearly if there’s a day where Bloomberg’s resources are going to matter it’s Tuesday,” said Jay Barth, a professor emeritus of political science at Hendrix College in Arkansas. The school and a local politics website, Talk Business & Politics, conducted a recent poll showing Bloomberg leading the state with 19.6% support.

Barth said “it’s the most nationalized primary day and the place where money matters,” noting that Super Tuesday has typically tested a candidate’s ability to stage a national campaign after competing in the previous smaller states.

Bloomberg’s spending has allowed him to quickly build a national operation, but if he doesn’t “win a significant number of delegates” on Tuesday, “there is no way forward” to the nomination said Kerry Haynie, a political science professor at Duke University.

“If he’s not at least third in overall delegates, there’s no way forward that I can see,” said Haynie.

Political analysts in California, Texas and North Carolina say part of Bloomberg’s challenge has been competing with Sanders’ early start in building a ground game in those states following his loss to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primary race.

Bloomberg’s late entry in the race and some of his policies as a “big city mayor” may have cost him from growing his base of support in Texas, where he trails Sanders, Biden and Warren, respectively, said Renée D. Cross, senior director at the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs.

“Texas is a very diverse state,” said Cross. “Biden appears to have a good hold on the majority of African American voters, and Sanders has made big inroads with Latinos. Together, Sanders and Warren have considerable leads with Anglos so it is hard for Bloomberg to break in, likely again due to his late arrival in the race.”

Cross said Bloomberg’s past support for the controversial stop-and-frisk policing tactic, his anti-obesity initiatives as mayor and his philanthropic support for gun control reforms may have also cost him support among Texas Democrats.

“Many Texans may know Bloomberg as the big city mayor who supported a ban on soft drinks or advocates gun control,” Cross said. “While one of these stances is obviously more important than the other, I think such intrusion goes against the grain of Texans’ independent spirit, whether they are Democrats or Republicans. And although gun control is high on priority lists of Democrats nationwide, it appears to have less urgency among Democrats in Texas.”

Cross added: “I don’t think he has a path without doing reasonably well in the larger states.”

Bloomberg, however, said he sees a path forward, telling MSNBC: “You got to be in it to win it. Anybody that goes in, yeah, I’m running a race, and I’m behind with one lap to go. What, am I going to quit? No, you run harder.”