Six US states go to vote: Biden seeks decisive blow to Sanders

Joe Biden was hoping to deal a debilitating blow to leftist rival Bernie Sanders on Tuesday as six states including crucial Michigan began voting in the Democratic presidential primaries.

A week after his startling turnaround in the "Super Tuesday" primaries, the centrist former vice president is hoping another big night could make him invincible as the Democrats pick a challenger to face President Donald Trump in November.

Sanders has acknowledged that Michigan is critical and like Biden has spent days barnstorming the state, one of three where Trump in 2016 pulled off narrow upsets that won him the White House.

Biden and Sanders are both septuagenarian veterans of the Senate but are running starkly different campaigns. Biden, who enjoys a sizable lead in polls, advocates a traditional Democratic platform of liberal legislative reforms while Sanders is urging a roots-up socialist revolution.

Artist and designer Cecilia Covington, 61, was the first person to vote in Precinct 123 in downtown Detroit, braving the darkness and a cold drizzle as she arrived at Chrysler Elementary School well before it opened as a polling station at 7:00 am (1100 GMT).

Covington has been a Biden fan from the start of his campaign, which began with two crushing defeats before his convincing win in South Carolina. "When he wasn’t doing well in the polls I was really concerned," she admitted. "But when he won the South Carolina primary I put my confidence back in him."

"We’ve got to get ‘45’ out of office," she said, referring to the current president. The primaries come with the US, like much of the world, roiled by the coronavirus epidemic that has infected almost 800 people across the country and killed 26.