Biden received 88.5 percent of the vote in New Jersey with 2 percent of precincts reporting, according to the Associated Press. In Delaware, Biden’s home state, Biden received 90.4 percent of the vote with less than 1 percent of precincts reporting.
Although Biden is the only Democrat left in the Presidential race, the names of former candidates remain on the ballot. In New Jersey, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders garnered 11.5 percent of the vote. Sanders only received 6.5 percent of the votes in the Delaware primary.
Delaware will allocate 21 pledged delegates while New Jersey will allocate 126 delegates. Biden has already received 2,144 delegates during the 2020 primaries. A candidate only needs 1,991 delegates in order to qualify to win the party nomination.
Delaware’s ballots were mostly mailed in to election officials although in-person voting was allowed in a limited amount of polling places. New Jersey sent all registered voters in the state mail-in ballots for the primary with roughly half of the in-person polling places open.
Because of the vote-by-mail procedures, final results from the primaries may not be released until tallies are completed. In New Jersey, ballots were deemed acceptable as long they were postmarked by 8:00 p.m. on Tuesday.
Political observers have debated the efficiency of mail-in voting, with some saying the process lends itself to fraud and election rigging. Delaware Governor John Carney said his decision to allow residents to vote by mail took into consideration the threat of coronavirus at in-person voting places.
“We should make it easier–not harder– for all Delawareans to exercise their fundamental right to vote,” Governor Carney said in a July statement. “That’s especially important this year as our state and country continue to grapple with the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic.”
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy also cited COVID-19 concerns in his May decision to send all registered voters in the state a vote by mail ballot.
“No one should have to choose between their health and exercising their right to vote,” Murphy said in a May statement. “By providing vote-by-mail ballots and applications, New Jersey voters will be able to safely participate in our democracy as the pandemic continues to threaten our public health.”
President Donald Trump has criticized mail-in voting. In April, Trump said that casting ballots by mail should not be allowed. “It shouldn’t be mail-in voting,” Trump told reporters. “It should be you go to a booth and you proudly display yourself.”
During a Fox News town hall in June, Trump said absentee ballots were acceptable because “people go through a process for that.”
“But the mail-in ballots, they mail them to anybody and they send them out by the millions,” Trump added. “We went through World War I and we voted. We went through World War II and we voted. And now we have a virus and by [the 2020 presidential elections], it’ll be less and less.”
