political editor and correspondent. And I want to

introduce you to.

ELENA MOORE: I'm Elena Moore. I'm a political researcher

focusing on the 2020 campaign.

MONTANARO: And we were able to take her out of her, her cave to

where she's been working on our briefing books.

There are now many, many pages.

MOORE: This is the first time I've seen sunlight in like...

DOMENCIO: This isn't really sunlight, though. But this is the closest

she's come.

So we have Super Tuesday.

MOORE: Yes.

Why is it a big day?

MOORE: Looking at the amount of delegates at stake on Super

Tuesday, there's 1,357 delegates.

And to put that in perspective, on our first day of

the election during the Iowa caucus, there were only 41

delegates at stake.

But on Super Tuesday, that's 30% of the entire delegates

possible to obtain in the entire primary season.

MONTANARO: Yeah, I mean, so far we've only had 4% of the

delegates allocated. We've had four states go so far. We're going to have 14

states, from Virginia to California, from Minnesota to

Texas.

This is a very diverse set of states. Half of the states have

significant African-American populations in the Democratic

electorate. A few very key states have Latino populations. That

could be a big factor. In particular, I'm thinking about

the crown jewel on Super Tuesday, right?

MOORE: Yes. California has the most delegates at stake on Super

Tuesday. There are 415, which is the most by far. Texas has 228.

So even compared to Texas, which is also a huge, huge state for

the candidates, there's nothing in comparison.

MONTANARO: You know, we're seeing this surge from Joe Biden.

Endorsements the day after South Carolina and into Monday.

Is that enough for him? Because he has not been doing so well on

advertising.

Bernie Sanders is the favorite going in. What are their numbers

looking like for who's on air?

MOORE: Who's on air? I mean, when you're looking at Super

Tuesday alone, the real person that stands out is actually

someone we haven't talked about yet, which is former New York

City Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Mike Bloomberg hasn't been on the

ballot in any of the first four states, even though he announced

in late November he wasn't on the ballot in any of them. But Mike

Bloomberg has spent a quarter of a billion dollars on advertising.

I don't think that, like, really makes sense unless you hear it

multiple times. But that is like around two hundred million

dollars on one day. In comparison. Joe Biden has spent

under a million dollars according to data we got last week.

MONTANARO: Well, you know, the one advantage that Joe Biden has

is that he has the highest name recognition of any of the

candidates. Sanders, though, has spent 15 and a half million

dollars on those Super Tuesday states, and that is who the

principal contender is compared to Biden.

The real issue here when we talked about California, how many

delegates are at stake. It is so important if you're a Joe Biden

fan, that he does at least okay in California because he could

wind up losing very, being very far behind, losing a net of 100,

200 delegates. And if that were to happen, there's no way that he

could catch up.

MOORE: Right. But it's important to note, I think still

that even though Super Tuesday has so many delegates, you still

cannot completely clean up and have a majority to go to the

nomination.

You can have a clear front runner status.

MONTANARO: And tell us why the number 15 is so important.

MOORE: Putting the Republican primary contests aside,

Democratic contests have a 15% threshold if you want to obtain

any delegates on the district level or in the statewide level.

So in order to get a 15% you need, the candidate has to get

proportionally 15% of that total vote. So when you look back on

like New Hampshire, Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren didn't do as

well there. And they both got, I think, under under 15% and didn't

get any delegates in the state.

MONTANARO: Right. So you get zero delegates if you're under

that 15% threshold. And the reason that's so important is if

you look at a state like California, recent polling has

shown Bernie Sanders with a very big lead and a lot of candidates

sort of teetering on that 15% threshold line. And if, you know,

some reason or some way, Bernie Sanders winds up with, say, 35%

of the vote and nobody else gets above 15%, he gets all 415

delegates.

That would be a lead that nobody could possibly be able to

catch up to him with unless something catastrophic happened.

Meanwhile, in the other states, Joe Biden is hoping to split a

lot of the delegates, if not do better than Bernie Sanders in

places like Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama. 90

MOORE: Tennessee.

MONTANARO: But 60% of the delegates still to be allocated

after Super Tuesday. We're going to know 90% of the delegates and

how they've been allocated by the end of April. So we're talking

about a month and a half, two months where we will have a very,

very good idea of who the nominee is by the end of April.

MOORE: Yeah, the current delegate count, it'll seem really

low, but it does show that Bernie Sanders is in the front. He has

60 delegates, followed by Joe Biden after a really, really

strong win in South Carolina.

MONTANARO: And you need 1,991 delegates for a pledged majority

to become the nominee. So we have a long way to go. I'm Domencio

Montanaro, our senior political editor at NPR.

MOORE: And I'm Elena Moore. I am a political researcher at NPR.

MONTANARO: Thanks for watching.

MOORE: Thanks.

MONTANARO: So how many are in Texas?

MOORE: 228

MONTANARO: How many in Alabama?

MOORE: [laughing] I don't know...

MONTANARO: Not Arkansas? Before she was rattling off all

these numbers.

MOORE: I was listing the top ones.

California: 415. Texas: 228. North Carolina: 110.

Virginia: 99. Massachusetts: 91...