No 2020 contender has fallen as hard or as fast as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.).
Once poised to break out of the pack and overtake frontrunner Joe Biden, Warren has seen her support collapse, dropping 12 percentage points from its peak in the RealClearPolitics polling average. She is now behind Michael Bloomberg and was all-but-tied with Pete Buttigieg before the former mayor departed from the race on Sunday. Warren has had an anemic showing in the early primaries, coming in third, fourth, fourth, and finally fifth place in each contest. She currently has just eight delegates, a bit more than 5 percent of the total thus far allocated.
With the departure of both Buttigieg and, on Monday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.), two questions are left hanging over Warren’s head in advance of the Super Tuesday slate of primaries. What happened to her campaign? And why is she still running it? The answer to both is that Warren has positioned herself as a unity candidate—a posture that not only tanked her chances but will likely drive the Democratic Party further apart come the convention in Milwaukee.
There is a chance that Warren will pull out a win in her home state of Massachusetts on Tuesday, but that’s far from certain. The latest polling has her tied with national frontrunner Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), who has led by a razor-thin margin in five of the last six polls of the state. Perhaps recognizing his chance to oust his progressive-lane opposition, Sanders made a show of force in the Bay State over the weekend, rallying first in Springfield and then drawing 13,000 to the Boston Common on Saturday.
Reflecting this, Warren is planning to spend Tuesday night—when a hypothetical victory party would occur—outside of her state. She will be voting in Cambridge Tuesday morning but is scheduled to give a speech in Detroit that evening, a week ahead of Michigan’s own “Super Tuesday II.” Warren’s campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment as to where the candidate expects to be on Tuesday.
