Super Tuesday sees Trump, Biden reign
Candidates move closer to November rematch despite low approval ratings
WASHINGTON — US President Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump romped through more than a dozen states on Super Tuesday, all but cementing a November rematch, despite low approval ratings for both candidates.
This year’s Super Tuesday was sapped of much of its suspense as Biden and Trump had effectively secured their parties’ nominations before the ballot was cast on Tuesday.
Trump won the Republican votes in 14 of 15 states, brushing aside former UN ambassador Nikki Haley.
The Supreme Court rejected the expulsion effort on Monday, clearing the path for Trump’s participation in every state.
Haley’s only win of the night came in Vermont. She plans to suspend her Republican presidential primary bid in a speech on Wednesday morning, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
Biden again cast Trump as a threat to US democracy. “Tonight’s results leave the American people with a clear choice: Are we going to keep moving forward or will we allow Donald Trump to drag us backward into the chaos, division, and darkness that defined his term in office?” he said in a statement.
Biden sailed through the Democratic contests, although a protest vote in Minnesota and six other states organized by activists opposed to his forceful support of Israel in the Gaza conflict attracted unexpectedly strong results.
The “uncommitted” vote in Minnesota stood at 19 percent with nearly 90 percent of the votes counted, according to Edison Research, higher than the 13 percent that a similar effort in Michigan drew last week.
Biden won Minnesota and 14 other states, including a mail-in vote in Iowa that ended on Tuesday.
Biden did suffer one loss, in the small US territory of American Samoa, where entrepreneur Jason Palmer won 51 votes to Biden’s 40, according to the American Samoa Democratic Party.
Fifteen states, including populous California and Texas, and the US territory of American Samoa, held primary elections on Tuesday, dubbed Super Tuesday. Iowa Democrats released the results of their presidential caucus earlier that day.
Another campaign between Trump, 77, and Biden, 81 — the first repeat US presidential matchup since 1956 — is one few US citizens seem to want. Opinion polls show both Biden and Trump have low approval ratings among voters.
“I would love to see the next generation move up and take leadership roles,” said Susan Steele, 71, a voter in Portland, Maine.
According to a recent poll by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, most people believe that neither Biden nor Trump has the mental acuity required for the role.
‘Wrong direction’
About 4 in 5 US adults think the United States is headed in the wrong direction while 1 in 5 think it is going the right way, the poll showed.
Immigration and the economy were leading concerns for Republican voters, Edison exit polls in California, North Carolina and Virginia showed.
Haley did not make a public appearance on Tuesday, and her campaign has not scheduled any events going forward.
In a statement, her spokesperson said the vote showed “there remains a large block of Republican primary voters who are expressing deep concerns about Donald Trump”.
Trump is scheduled to begin his first criminal trial on March 25 in New York, where he is charged with falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to an adult film star during his 2016 presidential run.
Biden faces his own weaknesses, including widespread concern about his age.
Biden is already the oldest president in history and Republicans key in on any verbal slip he makes. His aides insist that skeptical voters will come around once it is clear that either Trump or Biden will be elected again in November.
Trump is now the same age Biden was during the 2020 campaign, and he has exacerbated questions about his own fitness with recent flubs, such as mistakenly suggesting he was running against Barack Obama, who left the White House in 2017.
In a Reuters/Ipsos poll in late January, 67 percent said they are tired of seeing the same candidates in presidential elections and want someone new. A majority of Democrats, Republicans and independents share that sentiment.
“The majority is unhappy that this is the best the system can offer,” Clay Ramsay, a researcher at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, told Xinhua.
“The rematch will heighten the sense that the system isn’t working for ordinary people,” Ramsay said.