Every four years, Super Tuesday marks the day in presidential primary season with the highest number of delegates at stake. In total, the states voting today represent over a third of the delegates who will cast their votes for the Democratic presidential nominee at the Democratic National Convention in July. Between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m., Cambridge voters flocked to polling places — including one at Quincy House and another at Gund Hall in the Graduate School of Design — to cast their ballots. Around 11 p.m., the Associated Press named former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. the winner of the Massachusetts primary.

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) left her home near the Radcliffe Quadrangle just before 9 a.m. on Tuesday morning. Her husband, Harvard Law School professor Bruce H. Mann, and their dog, Bailey, accompanied her on the walk to her polling place at Graham and Parks Elementary School. Fans cheered as she descended down her steps and greeted her with chants of “Welcome home! Welcome home!”

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Onlookers rotated through a bevy of cheers for Warren, including the proclamation, “It’s time! It’s time! It’s time for a woman in the White House,” and “Dream big, fight hard!”

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Warren and Mann slowly made their way from their home to their polling place, shaking hands, hugging fans, and greeting neighbors as they went. One onlooker asked Mann who he was voting for. In response, he smiled and said, “Elizabeth!”

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On her way to the polling place, Warren stopped to speak with two young girls. Throughout her campaign, she has made it a ritual to tell each girl she meets, “My name is Elizabeth and I'm running for president, because that's what girls do” and to lock pinkies with them to symbolize their promise to remember. Afterwards, she hugged the girls, one of whom held a handmade sign.

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After voting, Warren stood atop the back of a pickup truck to address hundreds of supporters. “It’s just a typical election day in Cambridge,” she quipped to supporters. “I am so happy to be in the place where Bruce and I have been voting for 25 years, because we’ve been here, every time, with that spark of hope in our hearts, that the vote will matter, that we will build a better country. That’s what this election for me is all about.”

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Once she addressed supporters, Warren spoke to members of the press. Asked what “success looks like” on Super Tuesday, Warren said, “It’s to compete everywhere. That’s what this has been about from the beginning.” Warren lauded the “grassroots campaign” that she has run, citing the more than 1.25 million donors to her campaign. “I feel this has been our chance to get our message out, to get in the fight,” she said.

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Tyler J. Piazza ’21, Sebastian Revel ’21, and Eric K. Jjemba ’21 attended the Institute of Politics’ Super Tuesday Watch Event, all wearing red, white, and blue headbands, to listen to press coverage of results from the 14 states and single U.S. territory hosting primary contests.

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Marija Dautartaite followed the results from Super Tuesday at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, as more than a third of all delegates would be awarded by the end of the night.

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Institute of Politics Spring 2020 Resident Fellows, including Tiffany Cross, Lord Kim Darroch, Mark Harvey, Rohini Kosoglu, Tara Setmayer, and Governor Bill Walker, analyzed and predicted results from Super Tuesday primaries across the nation, examining potential outcomes for the various campaigns and the Democratic Party more broadly.

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As the Institute of Politics' Resident Fellows began analyzing the results from the 14 primary contests, Noah Harris '22 simultaneously listened and watched the initial results for Virginia’s primary on his laptop as reported by CNN.

Across the nation, Super Tuesday was a defining day for both the Democratic party and the Democratic primary election for the U.S. Presidential race. Students across Harvard’s campus participated in rallies, phone banks, and watch parties to demonstrate their support for various candidates. As the crowded primary field is culled down to one nominee over the next few months, students will continue watching with bated breath.

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