The campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is implementing a long-range strategy designed to win the Democratic nomination, focusing on primaries scheduled for next March.
The campaign is very encouraged by the early surge of support for their candidate, says campaign manager Jeff Weaver. According to a new poll in New Hampshire, Sanders leads Hillary Clinton by 16 percentage points and he is now also the front runner in Iowa.
Weaver says Sanders' strong support in the early-primary states makes it possible for the campaign to look ahead to Super Tuesday on March 1 of next year. That's a day when a dozen states will hold primaries.
"On March 1 we're going to be competing in every state, actively competing in every state that has a primary or caucus that day," Weaver says.
Weaver thinks there's a good chance that Sanders will do very well that day in Vermont, Massachusetts, Colorado and Minnesota, and that he will be competitive in most other states.
"On March 1 we're going to be competing in every state, actively competing in every state that has a primary or caucus." - Jeff Weaver, Sanders Campaign Manager
"We are in this for the long haul. This is really a race about delegates about accumulating delegates and we have a path to win it's not an easy path but we have a path to win to accumulate the delegates necessary to win the Democratic nomination and we're going to implement that program aggressively," he says.
Weaver says it's important for Sanders to do well in as many states as possible on Super Tuesday.
"And the way that the system works... is that there is no winner-take-all for delegates in the Democratic primary. Every state is proportional so you get delegates in proportion to how you did in the race — so you don't have to win everywhere," he says.
Weaver says the campaign is ramping up its operations in South Carolina and Nevada — the two states that hold primaries after New Hampshire. He expects to have field offices open in both states within the next week.
