It has been a busy week in the United States, with the outbreak of Covid-19. Of the United States' 56 jurisdictions, the Northern Mariana Islands is one of the three (along with West Virginia and American Samoa to not report any cases). So the current issue that is consuming the United States populace is absent from The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. And most of what consumed the US populace before that event probably don't apply to the citizens of the Northern Mariana Islands, who won't even be able to vote in the General Election. Most of the wide demographic groups talked about in such glib terms, suburban moderates, rust belt populists, young urban voters, don't really apply to the CMNI, an archipelago with around 55,000 people, located in the Western Pacific. Who were the voters who came out?
This was a caucus. The total participation was 132 caucus goers, splitting into 84 for Bernie Sanders and 48 for Joe Biden. Each one of these voters probably had a story and reason of their own for voting the way they did, perhaps a Studs Terkel-like project would be for someone to interview each one of the 132 and find out their life story and political reasoning. The result gave Bernie Sanders a win, although given both the general shape of the primary race, and the nation's other concerns, it was hardly the narrative upset that Bernie Sanders needed.
It is also interesting that while one of Sanders main narrative lines is to attack the "establishment", both in 2016 and this year, he has done better in caucuses, places that favor the more politically strident. Rather than being a populist choice who has been gatekept by the establishment, the wider the electorate, the worse he has done.