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Biden, Sanders Squaring Off in Next Democratic Presidential Voting

Ken Bredemeier

   WASHINGTON - Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, the easy winner of
   the South Carolina Democratic presidential primary, faces an immediate
   new challenge from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders when 14 states vote
   Tuesday in party contests across the country.

   Biden, in three runs for the presidency, had never won a state primary
   nominating election until Saturday. But pre-election surveys show that
   Sanders, a self-declared democratic socialist, is handily leading in
   California, where the most delegates to the party's mid-summer national
   presidential nominating convention are at stake in the next round of
   voting. The polling shows Biden ahead in seven of the states with
   Tuesday contests, Sanders in six and Sen. Amy Klobuchar in the lead in
   her home state of Minnesota.

   "It's going to be very hard to make up ground in California," Biden
   acknowledged Sunday on ABC News's "This Week." But he said, "I feel
   very good where it's going" in other states, adding that he's "not even
   certain" that he will be trailing Sanders in the overall convention
   delegate count after the Tuesday voting.

   Biden declared that he can beat Republican President Donald Trump in
   November's national election and "bring along [Democratic] candidates
   and win the Senate" that is now controlled by Republicans.

   A third of the pledged delegates to the July convention in the
   Midwestern city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, are at stake in the Tuesday
   voting, when former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's name will appear
   on the ballots for the first time.