Former US vice president Joe Biden has claimed victory in Michigan, the top prize among the six states holding their Democratic primaries for the presidential nomination on Tuesday.

‘It looks like we're going to have another good night - we've had victories in Mississippi, Missouri and Michigan,’ Biden said in Philadelphia as he also claimed success in two other states.

‘Just over a week ago, many pundits said this candidacy was dead. Now we're very much alive,’ he said to applause.

Repeating the line he used after last week's successful Super Tuesday when he won 9 of 14 primaries, Biden also addressed ‘all those who have been knocked down, all those who have been counted out, left behind’ and said his campaign was for them.

The result came as a blow to left-wing senator Bernie Sanders, for whom Michigan became a must-win after he slipped to second place in the delegate count during Super Tuesday, when a third of all delegates were allocated.

Both campaigns have been pouring resources into the northern state with 125 of the 352 delegates up for grabs on Tuesday. Michigan is also important as Democrats look to win back a state that narrowly went to President Donald Trump in 2016.

Missouri and Mississippi award 68 delegates and 36 pledged delegates respectively. Mississippi, a southern state with a large African-American voting population, was expected to favour Biden, who was vice president to the country's popular first black president Barack Obama.

The other states holding their primaries on Tuesday were Idaho, North Dakota and Washington. Polls there are yet to close or are too early to call.

All six states have 352 delegates at stake, making up nearly 10 per cent of the delegates up for grabs in the Democratic race this year.

Biden continues to build momentum in his comeback, as moderates and centrists coalesce around his campaign, which increasingly appears to be focused on a message of a so-called return-to-normal, in opposition to the Trump era.

Sanders continues to push a progressive reform package, including a massive health-care overhaul that would bring the US more in line with many global peers in the developed world. It also includes climate change proposals and criminal justice reform.

Signs persist the two front-runners still lack a clear path to an overall majority of delegates nation-wide, heading to the Democratic convention in July.

Both candidates on Tuesday cancelled rallies they were meant to hold in the evening in Ohio, a key battleground state that holds its primary next week, due to coronavirus concerns as cases surged to more than 950 in the United States.

Sanders and Biden's campaigns said they would evaluate future events with guidance from public health officials.

The next Democratic debate is set to take place on March 15 and is likely to be more focused, as after more than a year of an overcrowded field, which at one point had more than 20 contenders, the race is down to two.

Broadcaster CNN on Tuesday said it was eliminating the live debate audience, press centre and spin room ‘at the request of the campaigns and out of an abundance of caution.’  Whether or not turnout at the primaries was affected by the new coronavirus outbreak will be closely watched, particularly in Washington state which has been the epicentre of the virus in the US, though thanks to a unique system this may present less of a concern.

The state has mail-only polling in this election. Health officials, however, have been asking people over the past weeks not to lick ballot envelopes, which they have already been mailing.

Trump won the Republican Party primary races in Michigan, Missouri and Mississippi, in an unsurprising result as he is running virtually unopposed. The president offered his thanks to the three states on Twitter.



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