Super Tuesday 2020 Results In Massive Influx Of Memes And Discussions Online

Since 1976, the phrase “Super Tuesday” has been used to describe U.S. presidential primary events where a significant number of states hold elections and caucuses to select the party’s nominee. These contests serve as some of the most significant held during the course of the entire primary, as the nominees for each party are able to secure around one-third of all delegates during the span of just one day.

Leading up to the March 3rd, 2020, Super Tuesday event, most polls and predictions indicated that Bernie Sanders would perform well, especially taking into account his 2016 primary results where he swept states like Minnesota by 62 percent. But if you tuned into just about every major news outlet Tuesday night, most couldn’t stop discussing how much of an upset Joe Biden managed to pull, while mocking candidates like Bloomberg for wasting upwards of $500 million for an end result of just 44 delegates.

As the results continued to pour in late Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, online discussions erupted on social platforms from Reddit to Twitter and more as people debated the election ahead -- expressing apathy, heated discourse and, of course, memes.

Over on Reddit's r/Politics sub, the top posts of the day primarily revolved around links and discussions either supporting Sanders or claiming a Biden victory would lead to the same result seen during the 2016 presidential election.

The top post of the day on the subreddit, uploaded by Redditor VoteProgress, was a link to an MSNBC interview with Jeff Weaver (the former campaign manager for Sanders’ 2016 run) expressing that “Biden endorsers 'support the same old ideas that led to the election of Donald Trump.'” That day, the link received over 51,000 upvotes, numerous Reddit awards and roughly 3,000 comments from users.

The highest-upvoted comment on this post (over 9,400) came from Redditor SovietMudkip, who argued that Sanders provided a promising alternative to Trump’s brand of populism:

“Trump didn't win because Americans suddenly became racist. Trump won because material conditions in this country are very bad for far too many people. Trump posited a (false) reason as to why, and proposed solutions (that he ultimately failed to deliver on). People bought it because they know something needs to change and they weren't getting that from anywhere else by the time the general election rolled around. Sanders appeals to the same sense of unease and urgency but he focuses on the real issues and real solutions instead of fostering racism and nationalism. Sanders wants to change the material conditions that led to the rise of the far right. A vote for a ‘return to normalcy’ is a vote for the conditions that gave us Trump.”

Another top post from Redditor atomicspace, made in the early hours of March 4th, consisted of a link from USA Today under the title, “Many young voters sat out Super Tuesday, contributing to Bernie Sanders' losses,” was upvoted over 34,000 times and also received numerous awards and thousands of comments. With nearly 12,000 upvotes, a comment from Redditor lachesis44 became this post’s top chain stating, “This is the most frustrating part. We have been the most vocal about wanting Bernie as our representative and we still didn't fucking show up. It's infuriating.”

The Super Tuesday “megathreads” hosted on the subreddit to cover discussion surrounding the day’s events took place over 10 different posts with the total amount of comments on each hitting nearly 190,000 in total. Compared to 2016’s Megathread covering a similar Super Tuesday event, the participation on Reddit is staggering, as the single post from just 4 years ago barely peaked 33,000 total comments. According to the website Subreddit Stats, the number of subscribers to the r/Politics sub has nearly doubled between these two events with 3 million in 2016 and almost 6 million in 2020.

Many users elsewhere on the platform noted the existence of Reddit’s bubble, which seems to consist of primarily young Sanders supporters who vehemently denounce other candidates. The topic was broached in a post submitted to the r/OutOfTheLoop sub on March 4th by Redditor BurmaN-16 who asked “What's up with /r/politics?” with several links to that subreddit’s top posts supporting the theory. The top comment here (with 2,000 upvotes) from Redditor splendidfd answered, “A very similar thing happened back in 2016, during the primary pretty much everything upvoted on r/politics was pro-Bernie or anti-Hillary, once Hillary won the nomination it was all pro-Hillary or anti-Trump. The way the up/down voting system works makes it very easy for a relatively small majority to control what makes it to the front pages. Sanders has more support on Reddit than Biden, so that's what will get the attention.”

In contrast to this perceived progressive-leaning bubble on some of Reddit’s biggest subs, r/The_Donald also covered Super Tuesday as the top discussions from the last day primarily mocked Biden or supported the theory that Sanders was being swindled a win by the DNC -- with one user stating, “This is true they will screw him and ensure contested convention.”

Memes revolving around Super Tuesday also hit several subreddits, particularly seen on the r/PresidentialRaceMemes sub, where the top posts consisted of poking fun at Bloomberg and Elizabeth Warren, comparing the Democrat’s strategy in 2016 election to 2020, blaming Boomers for nominating Biden over Sanders, and pointing to the poor turnout of young voters supporting Sanders. One such meme posted by Redditor h-a-l-l tied into Bloomberg's win in American Samoa (seen below), where Tulsi Gabbard also won a delegate, using a variation of the Jeb Wins meme. This win for both candidates was a frequently used joke seen online across multiple sites.

The subreddit r/neoliberal also saw numerous memes following Super Tuesday's results as users posted their creations. On March 4th, Redditor sitonio posted a newly edited version of the I Am Once Again Asking for Your Financial Support meme depicting Sanders crying with Brendan Fraser's Alimony eyes photoshopped over his face alongside the quote "I am once again losing the fucking primary." An hour later, Redditor BranchDavidian uploaded another meme (shown below), which received over 800 upvotes and two awards.

Over on Twitter, discussions surrounding Super Tuesday were similarly split between the left and right with several noteworthy tweets coming from commentators, candidates and even the President himself, Donald Trump.

Perhaps Trump’s biggest tweet of the night mocked Bloomberg, calling him “the biggest loser by far” as he berated him for wasting $700 million while simultaneously destroying his reputation. This tweet alone received over 29,000 retweets and 146,800 likes as the President continued to ridicule other candidates like Warren for not bowing out ahead of the event.

The biggest loser tonight, by far, is Mini Mike Bloomberg. His “political” consultants took him for a ride. $700 million washed down the drain, and he got nothing for it but the nickname Mini Mike, and the complete destruction of his reputation. Way to go Mike!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2020

Several hashtags also began trending on the platform following the results, consisting of #SuperTuesdayResults, #RiggedPrimary, #RiggedDNC, #BernieOrBust2020, #WarrenDropOut, #JillBiden and #Joementum. The top hashtag from these was #SuperTuesdayResults with nearly 80,000 tweets, though the others saw much more heated discussions.

Particularly surrounding #RiggedPrimary and #RiggedDNC, the top tweets on Twitter consisted of users proclaiming such trends as the reason for Sander’s issues with both the 2016 and 2020 presidential primaries. One such tweet (with 1,700 likes) from user Maggie Jordan stated that the hashtag was “exactly the reason why @BernieSanders and some of his supporters are no better than trump.” While on the other side of #RiggedPrimary, a top tweet (with 6,500 likes) from user Michael Nazli said “Elizabeth warren took away 100’000’s of progressive votes from Bernie for just staying in with no chance whatsoever .. resulting in a big wins for Biden .. don’t tell me the system is not against Bernie.”

After vegan protesters stormed the stage during Biden’s speech that night where Jill Biden can be seen physically struggling with one of them, #JillBiden also began trending with over 15,000 tweets. One example of this comes from user Eugene Scott, who tweeted photos of the altercation and received over 3,300 likes stating “What a night.”

Symone Sanders.

Jill Biden.

What a night. #SuperTuesday pic.twitter.com/ngdz97nkRa

— Eugene Scott (@Eugene_Scott) March 4, 2020

Following his unexpected upset, Joe Biden tweeted a video of himself from a New York Times interview saying “I ain’t dead yet, and I’m not gonna die” alongside #Joementum. The video and hashtag subsequently became a meme as Twitter users began revamping it with different edits, seen in Justin Whang’s tweet below where it was used alongside one of Biden’s infamous gaffs.

I prefer this one #Joementum pic.twitter.com/iurZrW5F8S

— Justin Whang 🐙 (@JustinWhang) March 4, 2020

Elsewhere online, Super Tuesday discussion was also seen on 4chan, particularly in a post titled "Official Salt Thread," which received over 330 replies on /pol/, with many of the commenters mocking emotional reactions posted by supporters of Sanders and Warren.

Another 4chan thread titled, “Hillary Clinton Mocks Bernie Sanders In Super Tuesday Shot: His Campaign is Just Baloney,” covered her interview with Good Morning America promoting her new documentary series and received 62 replies from users on the site as they insulted Clinton and mocked Bernie for supporting her after he bowed out in the 2016 election.

All of this online discussion surrounding the presidential primary, especially Super Tuesday, shows a significant uptick in the overall amount of participation from users on various social platforms and websites on an unprecedented level. Additionally, there are strong arguments to be made for each of these online communities being guilty of creating echo chambers or bubbles, which particularly had an effect on the 2016 presidential election.

No matter which website you turn to for news or what social media platform you spend time on, it appears that online political discussions from all sides of the spectrum have hit an all-time high, and the use of memes within these viral debates is even more noticeable than what was seen back in 2016.