Former U.S. president, Donald Trump, cemented his position as the Republican Party’s all-but-certain nominee for November’s general election after sweeping the Super Tuesday primary contests.
“It is called ‘Super Tuesday’
for a reason. This is a big one,” Trump said in his victory speech, delivered
at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
As the crowd chanted “USA!
USA,’’ Trump said voters had delivered him an amazing night.
The results set the stage for a
White House rematch between Trump and the U.S. President, Joe Biden, who as the
first-term incumbent, had no real rivals for the Democratic Party’s nomination.
Trump easily defeated his last
remaining major challenger, Nikki Haley, in primaries held in a slew of States,
including California, Texas, Maine, Massachusetts, Virginia and North Carolina.
Other states include; Oklahoma,
North Dakota, Minnesota, Colorado, Alabama and Tennessee, according to
unanimous projections by broadcasters based on initial vote counts.
Haley was only projected to
have won the small north-eastern state of Vermont.
There was no suspense as Biden
notched wins across the Democratic primaries held Tuesday except in the South
Pacific territory of American Somoa, where the little known entrepreneur Jason
Palmer prevailed.
“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.
“With a division, and darkness
that defined his term in office? Biden asked in a statement.
Millions of people voted in the
polls held in 16 of the 50 states, plus American Samoa.
Super Tuesday marked the
largest single-day of nominating contests in the presidential primary campaign.
In the primary process, which
began in January in Iowa, candidates were awarded delegates with each state
they won.
One-third of the total
delegates available for the Republican nomination were up for grabs on Tuesday.
A candidate needed at least
1,215 delegates out of 2,429 to secure their spot on the November ballot.
The nomination would then be
made official at the Republican Party convention in July.
In spite of his overwhelming
win, it was not possible for Trump to secure all the delegates he needed on
Tuesday.
Before she became his 2024
opponent, Haley served in Trump’s administration as his ambassador to the
United Nations.
She has waged a long-shot bid
appealing to Republican moderates and independents but her campaign had not
been able to gain enough momentum to pose a serious threat to Trump.
She lost the primary in her
home state of South Carolina last month.
Tuesday’s contests were seen as
her last stand.
Her losses fuelled the belief
that her candidacy was no longer viable, with political watchers widely
expecting her to drop out of the race, though
the primary process would continue in the weeks to come.
Haley’s campaign said the
results of the Super Tuesday contests showed that the Republican Party still
remained deeply divided.
“Unity is not achieved by
simply claiming ‘we’re united.’ Today, in state after state, there remains a
large bloc of Republican primary voters who are expressing deep concerns about
Donald Trump.
The Haley campaign said this in
a statement.
Neither Haley nor her campaign addressed whether she planned on staying in the race.
So far, the 2024 election had
been dominated by domestic issues including immigration, crime, reproductive
rights and the economy, with many saying they still feel the pinch of inflation.
Worries about Biden’s age, he
is 81 and the oldest sitting president in U.S. history have increasingly
weighed on his campaign amid physical and verbal blunders.
Trump, who at 77 is only four
years younger than Biden, is facing deep legal problems.
He had been indicted in four
separate criminal cases and charged with a total of 91 felony counts.
They included his attempts to
overturn the results of the 2020 election, which Biden won.
In his Mar-a-Lago speech on
Tuesday night, Trump repeated many of the same themes he hit on at his campaign
rallies, including his demand that the U.S. border with Mexico be totally shut
to migrants.
“In some ways,’’ he said, the
U.S. had become a third-world country.
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