Super Tuesday: Warren called on to drop out and back Sanders after bruising defeat

After a disastrous set of results on Super Tuesday, Elizabeth Warren is facing mounting pressure from her progressive backers to step aside and throw her support behind Vermont senator Bernie Sanders.

Once leading in the polls and considered a frontrunner at debates, Ms Warren’s campaign for the Democrat nomination was in tatters on Wednesday morning as partial results showed she had failed to win the primary in her home state of Massachusetts, trailing to Joe Biden.

Across the 15 states and territories voting on Super Tuesday, Ms Warren was projected to have won just seven delegates, compared to at least 178 for Mr Biden and at least 153 for Mr Sanders. Mike Bloomberg, who has spent the better part of half a billion dollars on his campaign, was also struggling on eight delegates.

The disappointing Super Tuesday results come after Ms Warren failed to finish higher than third in any of the first four contests - Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.

Ms Warren and Mr Sanders have both campaigned on progressive policies and providing universal public healthcare, but the long-time friends have clashed publicly in their respective drives to be named the leading candidate of the Democrat left.

Speaking to Politico before the Super Tuesday results came out, Aimee Allison, founder of the progressive organisation She the People, noted that after the drop-outs of Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, the moderates had coalesced behind one candidate in Mr Biden.

“If a candidate pulls ahead after [Tuesday], we need to put aside our differences and unite on behalf of economic and racial justice,” Ms Allison said in reference to Ms Warren and Mr Sanders.

“The country is ready for new ideas, and we have two leading progressive campaigns that have so much to offer millions of Democrats. The moderates are playing to win. It’s time we rose up as a movement to play to win as well.”

Evan Weber, director of the Sunrise Movement which has been actively pro-Mr Sanders, said the two progressives “should publicly commit to grouping their delegates together at the convention in order to ensure that a progressive can win against the establishment”.

And Alexandra Rojas, executive director of the left-wing group Justice Democrats, accused Ms Warren of “attacking” Mr Sanders and urged her to “give her delegates to him if he has more votes to ensure a progressive wins the nomination”.

With Super Tuesday's results unfolding, there were mounting calls on social media for Ms Warren to step aside - and criticism of her failure to do so previously.

But Ashlee Marie Preston, the prominent trans rights activist and Warren campaign surrogate, wrote on Twitter: “Stop saying Warren should’ve dropped out for Bernie. He could have done the same when she was leading and he saw her robust plans/body of work she brought. If he supposedly encouraged her to run—he should have dropped out & supported her knowing she could materialize his vision.”

In spite of the latest poor results, Ms Warren appeared set on remaining in the race, at least for now.

Speaking to supporters in Detroit ahead of next week's Michigan primary, she introduced herself as "the woman who's going to beat Donald Trump."

The senator encouraged supporters to tune out the results and vote for the person they believed would be the best president, saying: “Prediction has been a terrible business and the pundits have gotten it wrong over and over.

“You don't get what you don't fight for. I am in this fight,” she said.