From Trump’s dark themes to a bruised Biden: Five takeaways from Super Tuesday

Donald Trump rolled up victories across the country on Super Tuesday, and by the end of the evening it was clear that the former US president had left Nikki Haley in the delegate dust.

Trump’s coast-to-coast wins – in California, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and beyond – brought a new mathematical certainty to what has been the political reality for some time: Trump is barrelling toward the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.

But tucked inside Trump’s often dominant statewide victories, there were still signs of vulnerability. He showed some of the same weakness in the swingy suburban areas that cost him the White House in 2020.

The presidential primaries, along with a series of congressional contests in key districts, many still undecided, offered the broadest look yet at the preferences of voters in both parties headed into the 2024 election. Here are five takeaways from the results.

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An unstoppable Trump continues to roll

Roughly one-third of the US voted on Tuesday but there was little drama. News outlets called state after state soon after polls closed, just as they have since Trump topped 50 per cent in Iowa’s kickoff caucuses.

The exception was Vermont, where Haley scored her first state victory (she won Washington, DC, over the weekend). But that was a small island in a sea of Trump landslides in more than a dozen other states, including Alabama, where he was above 80 per cent.

There was so little for Haley to spin on Tuesday that she skipped any public remarks at all, watching returns behind closed doors in Charleston, South Carolina. An aide said music was blaring and the mood upbeat, suggesting that her campaign had become about delivering a message as much as accumulating delegates. Within hours confirmation emerged that Haley would be withdrawing from the race.

[ US election: Super Tuesday primary sweep confirms the second coming of Donald Trump ]

In any case, Trump has largely campaigned in primary states that also happen to be November battlegrounds. He went to North Carolina last weekend, for instance, before Super Tuesday and is headed to Georgia this coming weekend before its March 12th primary.

On Tuesday, Trump held a party at Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Florida. (He has spent around $315,000 [€290,000] in campaign funds at Mar-a-Lago since announcing his run 2024 run, records show.) “It’s been a big night,” he declared.

The bigger night for Trump – actually securing the delegates needed to ensure his nomination – could come as early as March 12th or March 19th.

There are warning signs for Trump in the Haley vote

At this point, the Biden team is studying Haley’s showing in suburban areas almost as closely as the Trump operation is, if not more.

The most important autumn battleground that voted on Tuesday was North Carolina, a state Trump only narrowly won in 2020. And while Trump won the primary there with roughly 75 per cent of the vote, he was weakest in the counties encompassing and surrounding Raleigh and Charlotte, ahead in Mecklenburg County by single digits.

Exit polling told another part of the story.

A majority of Haley’s primary voters said they were voting against her opponent more than for her, a sign of anti-Trump motivation that could last until November. And even in defeat, she was leading among moderate voters by nearly 2-1. Her problem was that moderates make up only 20 per cent of the voters in a GOP primary. But in a close general election, those voters may matter more.

Overall, roughly one in four Republican primary voters in North Carolina said they would feel dissatisfied if Trump won the nomination.

“In state after state, there remains a large bloc of Republican primary voters who are expressing deep concerns about Donald Trump,” said Olivia Perez-Cubas, a spokeswoman for the Haley campaign.

The educational divide inside the Republican Party was especially stark. Trump was only narrowly carrying Republican primary voters with college degrees in North Carolina, 51 per cent to 45 per cent, but he was crushing Haley, 80 per cent to 15 per cent, among Republican voters without a college degree.

In other words, Trump’s base is delivering him the nomination. But he may need to bring other voters into his coalition to win in the autumn.

Democrats bruised Biden – again

Biden, who has had only nominal opposition for the Democratic nomination, also rolled to big-margin victories across the country: Alabama, Maine, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia, to name a few. By the end of the night, he swept all 15 states.

But yet again there were flashing lights for a president who is struggling to rally the whole of his party behind him. With results still coming in, nearly 20 per cent of Democrats in Minnesota voted uncommitted, in an apparent protest vote against Biden’s support of the Israel military response to the Hamas-led terrorist attack of October 7th. Biden was winning only two-thirds of the vote in Hennepin County, home to Minneapolis.

The protest was an extension of a campaign that started in Michigan last week, when 13 per cent of Democrats voted uncommitted. The larger share in a state with fewer Arab American voters – but a large and active progressive wing – suggested that the movement of voters pressing Biden for a policy change was gaining traction.

There were other signs, too. In Colorado, the noncommitted vote was 7 per cent with votes still being counted. There was a significant “no preference” vote in North Carolina as well; it’s worth noting as Biden considers contesting a state that Trump won by a whisker in 2020.

It is far from clear what those voters will do this November. But should they back Trump, support a third-party candidate or just stay home, they could cost Biden a close election.

Minnesota wasn’t the only state that cast a bit of a cloud over Biden’s night. In a small indignity for the sitting president, Biden tied in the delegate race in American Samoa to Jason Palmer, an entrepreneur. There are no Electoral College votes in American Samoa.

A Trump speech previews dark themes for the autumn

When Trump won in Iowa in January, he pulled aides onstage for an impromptu celebration. He did the same in the next contest, inviting supporters alongside him in New Hampshire. And then again in South Carolina.

But on Super Tuesday, Trump stepped on to the stage solo. Then he never mentioned Haley’s name.

The imagery and messaging were unmistakable: Trump is focused on Biden now and prosecuting a case that America has darkened since he departed, with a particular focus on immigration, inflation and international affairs.

“Frankly our country is dying,” Trump said.

He was speaking in typical hyperbole but tapping into a real sentiment. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll showed 65 per cent of registered voters believe the nation is headed in the wrong direction – including 42 per cent of Democrats.

A week after Trump and Biden both travelled to the border, the former president returned over and over to the issue that now animates much of his stump speech.

He also tried to make his case on his handling of Covid (“We never got credit for that”), the stock market (“That’s doing well because our poll numbers are so much higher than Joe Biden’s”) and how the nation’s worldwide standing had plummeted since he departed (“The world is laughing at us”).

California’s top-two primary system was an early loser

There were two winners in the California Senate primary: Adam Schiff, a Democrat, and Steve Garvey, the former Los Angeles Dodger and a Republican.

But there also was, arguably, one clear loser: the top-two, non-partisan primary system that California voters adopted in 2010. The system was sold as good government reform, meant to drain partisanship and promote centrist politicians. Instead, it showed itself – again – to be as vulnerable as traditional primaries to partisan political gamesmanship.

Schiff, one of two leading Democrats in the contest to fill the seat held by the late Dianne Feinstein, and allies spent millions of dollars boosting Garvey.

Garvey, who barely campaigned, has little chance of being the next senator from overwhelmingly Democratic California. But Schiff wanted to run against a Republican in the runoff rather than Katie Porter, a Democrat with sizeable support among progressives.

Supporters of Porter also tried to game the system, albeit not as aggressively as Schiff, by bolstering the prospects of another Republican on the ballot, Eric Early, to pull Republican support from Garvey.

One unintended result: Republican voters, who have been increasingly marginalised in statewide races as California has grown more and more Democratic, ended up having at least a little bit of a say in picking the state’s next senator. – This article originally appeared in The New York Times