Joe Biden and Donald Trump swept Super Tuesday. The first, due to lack of rivals, as is customary for the president in office. The second, because he has the Republican bases in his grasp. Both left the nomination race politically closed, although mathematically they have to wait a week or two to certify their victory. The rapid and resounding victory of the two favorites leads to an inevitable repetition of the 2020 electoral duel with the roles changed: Biden, in the White House, and Trump, in the opposition. That forces Americans to choose between two candidates who are clearly unpopular with the population as a whole. An outcome that already seemed obvious before the least disputed Super Tuesday in history, but that leaves some alarm signals for both.
The real race begins now, with the path completely clear for Trump after the withdrawal of his only remaining Republican rival, Nikki Haley. Haley leaves after having managed to win only in Washington, the US capital, and Vermont: the two territories in which Biden won by the largest margin in 2020. In her speech, Haley avoided giving her support to Trump. On the Republican side, the big unknown now is who the voters of the former ambassador to the UN will support: according to polls, a mix of old-school moderate and anti-Trump Republicans, and disenchanted Biden supporters. The president has already made a move and in a statement reacting to the former governor’s march he invited them to join him: “Donald Trump has made it clear that he does not want Nikki Haley’s supporters. I want to be clear: in my campaign there is a place for them.”
On the Democratic side, where Biden’s symbolic rival, Congressman Dean Phillips, has also announced the end of his candidacy, the president is gambling this Thursday with his State of the Union speech. The solemn annual meeting before the two houses of Congress is always one of the great dates on the American political calendar. But this time it is fundamental for Biden: what he says, how he says it and the image he projects before an audience of tens of millions of people will shape how voters perceive him from now on, in the months in which the undecided – that bloc of voters that will tip the balance to one side or the other—will consolidate their definitive voting opinion.
On Super Tuesday, Donald Trump won 14 of the 15 states holding Republican primaries. He only missed Vermont, a centrist state that votes Democratic in the presidential elections and has a moderate Republican governor. He achieved more than two-thirds of the vote in Alabama (84%), Oklahoma (82%), Texas (78%), Tennessee (77%), Arkansas (76%), North Carolina (75%), Maine (72 %), Minnesota (67%), Alaska (83%) and California (78%), and more than 60% in Colorado, Massachusetts and Virginia. This allows him to win the vast majority of the 874 delegates that were at stake. He already has more than 1,000 of the 1,215 he needs for the convention. He can surpass the bar next Tuesday, with the 161 delegates in contention from Georgia, Hawaii, Mississippi and Washington State.
Biden scored victories in the elections of the 15 States (Alaska was not on the Democratic side, but Iowa was), the majority with percentages above 80%. He only had a testimonial defeat by 51 votes to 40 against the unknown businessman Jason Palmer in the territory of American Samoa, which does not even vote in the presidential elections, and he received significant percentages of punishment votes in several States for his pro-Israeli position in the war of Loop. In his case, the virtual mathematical nomination may arrive on March 19, since the Democratic primaries are somewhat later.
Both are already focusing on November 5, the date of the presidential elections, as their first reactions to Tuesday’s result showed. Trump appeared alone on stage from his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, and avoided quoting Haley. He launched into an attack on Joe Biden in a disjointed speech, but which left hints of what the campaign’s themes are going to be. He spoke about immigration and crime, two concepts that he unfairly associates, but also about inflation, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and the covid.
Doubts about moderate Republicans
Although Trump does not want to mention Haley, the fact that a candidate who was practically hopeless has achieved more than 30% of the votes in several states seems to indicate that Trump does not arouse enthusiasm among a segment of Republican voters. And if Trump does not convince the moderate Republicans, it will be even more difficult for him with the independents, not registered in either party. The ghost of the 2022 legislative elections in which the great red wave that he predicted did not reach the shore because of extremist candidates is there.
If something has become clear in this first stage of the primaries, it is that neither of the two candidates falls in love. Polls indicate that between 60% and 70% of the population would prefer that neither of them appear. Both carry their own burdens. Trump, his unpopularity among moderates, although for now he leads in the polls. In the case of Biden – the first octogenarian president of the United States – his great obstacle is his age. But also the perception that the economy is not going as it should, the complaints of a large part of the population about the increase in illegal immigration and, among the progressive wing, its support for Israel in Gaza.
The president has already received notices from his voters. Some of them serious. Following their success in the Michigan primary last week, the hastily organized campaign by progressive groups and the Arab American community in several states to ask Democrats to vote “without preference” or “undeclared” (equivalent to one vote blank) and thus pressuring the president in favor of a ceasefire in Gaza has achieved important success in Minnesota. There, 19% of Democratic ballots had that option marked. In North Carolina, that percentage was 12%. In Massachusetts it exceeded 9%, and in Colorado 7%, in a sign of the discontent of the young vote and the progressive wing.
Until now, the White House has assured that it listens to these voters and expresses its confidence that, when the time comes in November and with the prospect of a new Trump mandate, they will return to the fold and end up casting their ballot for Biden.
In fact, the president’s main hope is that his electorate will mobilize to prevent Trump from winning. In his first message after the victory on Super Tuesday, he pointed in that direction: “Are we going to continue moving forward or will we allow Donald Trump to drag us backwards, towards the chaos, division and darkness that defined his mandate?” a statement in which he cited his rival several times.
Trump, meanwhile, faces a complicated judicial agenda. He has been convicted in civil cases of fraud, sexual abuse and defamation, but this month he is scheduled to take the stand to face a criminal case that could carry jail terms. He has three other pending charges in which he has been gaining time, but it is not ruled out that he will have to sit on the bench again before the elections in Washington and Georgia for his attempts to rig the 2020 elections and in Florida for the case of classified papers.
The November elections will be decided mainly in six highly contested states (Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada) in which Biden won in 2020. Trump may need to win three to secure the nomination and, at least At the moment, he has an advantage in the polls in all of them.
The real electoral campaign begins now and has eight months ahead. An electoral campaign more peculiar than ever, with two unpopular candidates, in which the traditional concerns of voters – the economy and inflation, immigration, crime… – are added to others that were unimaginable a few years ago, such as defense of democracy. And in which factors beyond the control of the candidates, whether judicial cases or the progress of the war in Gaza or Ukraine, have many roles to tip the balance in November. Eight months in which many things can happen.
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