Biden, Trump sweep Super Tuesday races
Rivals move closer to November rematch
WASHINGTON (AP) – US President Joe Biden and his predecessor, Donald Trump, were sweeping the coastto-coast contests on Super Tuesday, all but cementing a November rematch and increasing pressure on the former president’s last major rival, Nikki Haley, to leave the Republican race.
Biden and Trump had each won Texas, Alabama, Colorado, Maine, Oklahoma, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Minnesota and Massachusetts. Biden also won the Democratic primaries in Utah, Vermont and Iowa.
Haley’s strongest performance was in Vermont, where she was essentially tied with Trump in early results, but the former president carried other states that might have been favorable to Haley such as Virginia and Maine, which have large swaths of moderate voters, like those who have backed her in previous primaries.
Not enough states will have voted until later this month for Trump or Biden to formally become their parties’ presumptive nominees, but the primary’s biggest day made their rematch a near certainty.
Both the 81-year-old Biden and the 77-year-old Trump continue to dominate their parties despite facing questions about age and neither having broad popularity across the general electorate.
The only contest either of them lost on Tuesday was the Democratic caucus in American Samoa, a tiny US territory in the South Pacific Ocean. Biden was defeated by previously unknown candidate Jason Palmer, 51 votes to 40.
Haley, who has argued that both Biden and Trump are too old to return to the White House, was spending election night watching results in the Charleston, South Carolina area, where she lives.
Her campaign website does not list any upcoming events.
Still, her aides insisted that the mood at her watch party was “jubilant.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s Mara-Lago estate was packed for a victory party that featured hors d’oeuvres, including empanadas and baked brie.
Among those who attended were staff and supporters, including the rapper Forgiato Blow and former North Carolina representative Madison Cawthorn. The crowd erupted as Fox News, playing on screens around the ballroom, announced that the former president had won North Carolina’s GOP primary.