Biden wins North Carolina primary

Former Vice President Joe Biden won North Carolina’s Democratic presidential primary, scoring one of the biggest electoral prizes of Super Tuesday.

CNN and ABC both projected Biden would win as polls closed at 7:30 p.m. ET. His victory in the state could give his campaign a boost, providing him his second win of the night after Virginia, following disappointing finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire last month.

The vote in North Carolina has yet to be counted. The results were delayed slightly after the state’s board of elections extended voting hours in a single precinct in Winston-Salem due to a ballot shortage.

But exit polls indicated that Biden was poised to win the state by a clear margin.

Biden’s victories in North Carolina and Virginia provided an early sign of momentum for the former vice president in the South. He’s also the favorite to win in Alabama, given his strength among black voters, who are expected to make up more than half the state’s Democratic electorate.

North Carolina is a significant win for Biden. The state has 110 pledged delegates up for grabs on Tuesday. It’s still unclear exactly how many of those he will be awarded.

His win in the Tar Heel State is also likely to help Biden bolster his argument that he’s the candidate capable of building the most diverse coalition of voters. In 2016, black voters made up about one-third of the Democratic electorate in North Carolina.

Biden has emerged as the clearest challenger to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) after he scored a major victory in the South Carolina primary on Saturday.

Following that win, two of Biden’s moderate rivals, former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), dropped out of the race and threw their support behind the former vice president.

Sanders, the standard-bearer for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, emerged as the primary field’s nominal front-runner last month after scoring back-to-back wins in the New Hampshire primary and Nevada caucuses. He’s hoping to extend his delegate lead on Tuesday night with an expected victory in the California primary and a potential win in Texas.

Updated at 7:56 p.m.