BIDEN, TRUMP HAVE SUPER TUESDAY
President Biden and former President Donald Trump were swiftly declared the winners of their respective primaries here in Massachusetts while voters were still in line in other Super Tuesday states.
The Bay State was called for Trump just before 9 p.m., about half an hour after Biden’s win was declared. Virginia went for Trump and Biden right after 7 p.m., North Carolina was called for both a halfhour later.
Results out of Oklahoma and Tennessee came shortly after 8 p.m., and Iowa, where Trump won the Republican caucus held earlier this year, was called for Biden before 8 p.m. Both candidates also won in Maine shortly after 8:30 p.m. Not long after, Trump and Biden were declared the winners in Arkansas.
The last of the polls in Texas closed at 9 p.m. The state was called for Trump and Biden within 5 minutes. About 20 minutes later Alabama was called for the pair, followed shortly by Colorado and Minnesota.
Their projected wins all but guarantee that the 2024 presidential election will mirror the 2020 contest, with only the occupant of the White House changed.
Both campaigns went into the day understandably certain they were about to walk away the winners. Biden’s camp was touting a particularly good round of fundraising, and his press secretary said the president was focused on tomorrow night’s State of the Union address.
And, keeping to the Super Tuesday script, both Biden and Trump won in California.
“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 backwards into the chaos, division, and darkness that defined his term in office?” Biden said.
“MAGA,” Trump, said via his Truth Social media platform before the polls closed. “AMERICA FIRST!”
“THANK YOU, VIRGINIA — MAGA,” he said after that race was called.
Not long after, he wrote, “THANK YOU, MASSACHUSETTS — MAGA!” That all-caps theme continued throughout the evening.
“Congratulations to former President Donald Trump, who has secured a win in Massachusetts and will receive our delegates in Milwaukee,” MassGOP Chair Amy Carnevale said in a statement.
Though the victories aren’t enough to propel either man forward in the delegate count such that they can claim to have clinched the nomination, the numbers don’t lie, and they spell disaster for former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley’s campaign or that of any other outsider hoping to unseat either incumbent party leader.
Early results out of Virginia, for example, showed author Marianne Williamson beating U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips with less than 8% of the vote and despite the former previously suspending her campaign (she later reversed after a third place showing in Michigan).
“Congratulations to Joe Biden, Uncommitted, Marianne Williamson, and Nikki Haley for demonstrating more appeal to Democratic Party loyalists than me,” Phillips posted to the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Haley, for her part, looked like she gave Trump a run for his money in both Virginia, where she managed to grab a third of the vote, and Vermont, where she pulled off a surprise victory for at least a share of that state’s 17 delegates. However, in the end and considering the evening’s overall delegate count, she couldn’t realistically claim a major victory anywhere.
Haley’s campaign, which traveled over 8,000 miles in the run up to Super Tuesday, did not host a primary watch party or schedule any events for the next day. Still, her team told the Associated Press that the mood among staff gathered in Charleston, South Carolina, to watch the primary results is “jubilant,” and her losses didn’t prevent her from seeking donations.
“We’ve got a country to save, and we have a real shot at getting it done,” she said in a fundraising email sent 30 minutes before the earliest poll closures.
In order for Trump to win the Republican nomination, he needs to secure 1,215 delegates out of 2,429. With 865 delegates available on Tuesday, and after Trump won all the proceeding contests excepting Washington D.C., it’s likely his pre-Super Tuesday count of 276 will jump to about 1,100 by the time the dust settles on Wednesday.
In order for Biden to lock up the Democratic nomination, he’ll need 1,968 delegates out of 3,934. Even if he won 1,420 delegates available last night on top of the 206 he won before then, he’d still be over 300 delegates shy of wrapping up the race.