Trump sweeps Super Tuesday and gears up to face Biden in November

As expected, Super Tuesday was Donald Trump’s day. Though the former president has not yet mathematically secured the nomination, the Republican has established himself as the all-but-confirmed nominee of his party for the upcoming November presidential election. In his path back to the White House, he has taken out any and every rival who has dared to challenge him; in fact, several candidates dropped out of the race before the primaries even began. Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis threw in the towel in the first round after their failures in the Iowa caucuses. Since then, Nikki Haley is the only one who stayed in the fight, but Trump all but knocked her out of the ring this Tuesday. Now comes the moment of truth, the ultimate battle for the presidency. As in 2020, Trump will again face Joe Biden, who also swept the Democratic Super Tuesday in the absence of any real rivals. The countdown is on: 245 days to go until November 5.

A victorious Trump spoke Tuesday night from his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, where he called Biden “the worst president” in U.S. history (a designation historians have actually used to describe Trump himself). Alone on stage and with about fifteen U.S. flags behind him, he gave a somewhat disjointed speech in which he avoided referencing Haley. He — the most divisive figure in decades of American politics — also complained that the country is too divided. “In some ways, we’re a Third World country. We’re a Third World country at our borders, and we’re a Third World country at our elections,” he said, adding that he must win come November to save the country. “We are going to make our country greater than ever before,” he concluded, in reference to his Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement.

For its part, the Biden campaign released a statement from the president celebrating his victory and attacking Trump: “Are we going to keep moving forward or will we allow Donald Trump to drag us backwards into the chaos, division, and darkness that defined his term in office?”

Trump has already claimed victory in Texas, North Carolina and California, the Super Tuesday states with the most delegates. In fact, the former president already won 12 of the 13 states where the vote count is very advanced, and he has done so decidedly. He especially swept Alabama (84%), Oklahoma (82%), Texas (78%), Tennessee (77%), Arkansas (76%), North Carolina (75%) Maine (72%) and Minnesota (67%). He also had more than 60% of the vote in Colorado, Massachusetts and Virginia.

Haley only held on in Vermont, where she won in a very close race. This is a state that votes Democratic in the presidential election and has a moderate Republican governor, the most favorable terrain for the former U.N. ambassador and former governor of South Carolina. The candidate had so far won only the Republican primary in Washington D.C. Haley, however, was clearly defeated in Massachusetts and Maine, the other two New England states that voted Tuesday.

This year’s Super Tuesday was the most predictable one in American history. It had nothing to do with the fierce battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in 2008, nor the clashes between Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio in 2016, nor between Biden and Bernie Sanders in 2020. In fact, no Super Tuesday had ever yielded such a conclusive (and foreseeable) result.

Millions of Americans voted at the polls, by mail, through electronic voting screens, and even without getting out of the car, as in some places in California. Nevertheless, data shows that the turnout was low, probably because the results were so obvious.

Election night began with the results of the Iowa Democratic primary. After the chaos of four years ago and under pressure from President Joe Biden, the Democratic Party eliminated the state’s caucuses and its affiliates had been voting by mail since January 12, but the result was made public this Tuesday. Biden swept with 91% of the votes and took the state’s 40 delegates.

Then the results from the 15 Super Tuesday states began to pour in. The first came from Virginia, at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time. They effectively set the tone for the night: Trump and Biden swept both states for their respective parties. From then on, the states were called, one by one, for Trump and Biden, with the exception of Vermont, which was called for Haley.

Despite the overwhelming Biden-Trump dominance, there were small warning signs for both. Though Biden won over 80% and 90% of the vote in most states, in Minnesota the phenomenon of “uncommitted” votes, a kind of blank protest vote that was present in the Michigan primary, reappeared, accounting for around 15% of the total votes. In addition, 9% voted for local candidate Dean Philips, leaving the president with only 72% in the state.

American Samoa took a clear stand against Biden’s reelection campaign, and he was defeated by businessman Jason Palmer. As an American territory, Samoans do not vote in the November presidential election, but still send 11 delegates to the Democratic Convention.

On Trump’s side, even if his lead is undeniable, the question is how many of those voters who have voted for Haley will support him come November 5. The former president is weaker in more moderate counties with higher levels of education. The specter that haunts Republicans, and about which Haley has repeatedly warned, is that Trump may once again scare away independent and moderate voters at the general election, as happened in 2018, 2020 and 2022. In several Super Tuesday states, Haley surpassed 25% of the vote.

The allocation of delegates is a slow process, due to the different rules in each state, which sometimes require the vote count to be well advanced before calling the state for whichever candidate. Even so, both Biden and Trump are quickly racking up the delegates they need for their official nominations. Looking ahead, on the Republican side, Georgia, Hawaii, Mississippi and Washington State vote on March 12, for a total of 161 delegates that Trump could win. As the Democratic calendar is somewhat behind the Republican one, Biden will still have to wait another week, until March 19 (when Arizona, Illinois, Kansas and Ohio vote).

At the July 15-19 Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, there are a total of 2,429 delegates. This Tuesday, 874 of those were up for grabs. Trump needs 1,215 to secure the nomination.

The Democratic convention will be held August 19-22 at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois. It will have a total of about 4,540 delegates and superdelegates (the designation is based primarily on their position), but on the first ballot there will be 3,934 delegates. Biden must get 1,968 pledged delegates, and 1,420 are to be allocated this Tuesday.

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