Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign currently has no active Facebook ads, the morning after another disappointing finish in a series of primary contests thrashings.
Why it matters: A pause in digital advertising spend on Facebook has been a good indicator that candidates are dropping out of the 2020 race before. Pete Buttigieg and Michael Bloomberg made their Facebook ads inactive hours before they suspended their campaigns.
The state of play: Sanders and his wife Jane are traveling back to Vermont today to “assess the path forward for our campaign,” per a note from his campaign manager Faiz Shakir.
Shakir wrote that “last night did not go the way we wanted,” after they lost all three states that voted: Arizona, Illinois and Florida.
Former Vice President Joe Biden didn’t just defeat the progressive senator from Vermont in Tuesday’s primaries. He crushed him. As of Wednesday morning, with almost 90 percent of votes counted, Biden was ahead of Sanders by 12 points in Arizona. In Illinois, he won by 23 points, and in Florida he won by a whopping, embarrassing 39 points. NBC News’ count now puts Biden more than 300 delegates ahead of Sanders. The Economist’s poll average has Biden 28 points ahead of Sanders nationally.