Super Tuesday: Biden, Trump set for rematch as they win majority of states in early results

It looks like it is going to be a replay of the 2020 presidential elections in the US with both President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump already winning a majority of the states that went to the polls on Super Tuesday (March 5), according to a report by AFP.

Donald Trump seems to be well on his way to becoming the Republican party’s presidential nominee as he won 11 out of the 15 states that voted on Super Tuesday, as called by US networks. And his likely competitor from the Democratic party in the November presidential elections, President Joe Biden, won 13 out of the 15 states.

Trump expressed his gratitude to the voters on his Truth Social site even as the counting continued in other Super Tuesday states across the US.

Biden started off the night by winning Virginia as well as Iowa, where Democrats previously held a presidential preference contest but didn't release their results until Tuesday.

Surprise victory for Haley in Vermont

Nikki Haley has scored a surprise victory on Super Tuesday, upsetting Donald Trump to win Vermont. That victory will do little to dent Trump's primary dominance, however, as the former president won 11 other states on Super Tuesday.

Haley is the last major rival to Trump standing in a once-crowded primary field. She has increasingly stepped up her attacks on the former president, arguing that he will lose in November to President Joe Biden if he clinches the party's nomination.

Still, a Trump sweep would only intensify pressure on her to leave the race.

Nominations effectively settled

The 81-year-old Biden and the 77-year-old Trump continue to dominate their parties despite both facing questions about their age and neither commanding broad popularity across the general electorate.

The earliest either can become his party's presumptive nominee is March 12 for Trump and March 19 for Biden. But, in a departure from most previous Super Tuesdays, both nominations are effectively settled, with Biden and Trump both looking ahead to a reprise of the 2020 general election. Trump still faces one major challenger, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, but has mostly focused on Biden in his rallies and interviews.

“We have to beat Biden - he is the worst president in history,” Trump said on Tuesday (March 5) on “Fox & Friends.”

Biden countered with a pair of radio interviews aimed at shoring up his support among Black voters, who helped anchor his 2020 coalition.

“If we lose this election, you're going to be back with Donald Trump,” Biden said on the “DeDe in the Morning” show hosted by DeDe McGuire. “The way he talks about, the way he acted, the way he has dealt with the African American community, I think, has been shameful.”

Majority of Americans don’t want Biden or Trump: Survey

Despite Biden's and Trump's domination of their parties, polls make it clear that the broader electorate does not want this year's general election to be identical to the 2020 race. A new AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll finds a majority of Americans don't think either Biden or Trump has the necessary mental acuity for the job.

“Both of them failed, in my opinion, to unify this country,” said Brian Hadley, 66, of Raleigh, North Carolina.

The final days before Tuesday (March 5) demonstrated the unique nature of this year's campaign. Rather than barnstorming the states holding primaries, Biden and Trump held rival events last week along the US-Mexico border, each seeking to gain an advantage in the increasingly-fraught immigration debate.

SC restores Trump to primary ballots

After the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 on Monday (March 4) to restore Trump to primary ballots following attempts to ban him for his role in helping spark the Capitol riot, Trump pointed to the 91 criminal counts against him to accuse Biden of weaponising the courts.

“Fight your fight yourself,” Trump said. “Don't use prosecutors and judges to go after your opponent.”

State of the Union address on March 7

Biden delivers the State of the Union address on Thursday (March 7), then will campaign in the key swing states of Pennsylvania and Georgia.

The president will defend policies responsible for "record job creation, the strongest economy in the world, increased wages and household wealth, and lower prescription drug and energy costs,” White House communications director Ben LaBolt said in a statement.

LaBolt also drew a contrast to Trump's priorities that he described as “rewarding billionaires and corporations with tax breaks, taking away rights and freedoms, and undermining our democracy.”

Trump’s provocative statements about immigrants

Biden's campaign called attention to Trump's most provocative statements that evoked Adolf Hitler by declaring that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the US and suggesting flippantly that he would serve as a dictator on his first day back in the White House.

Trump recently told a gala for Black conservatives that he believed African Americans empathised with his four criminal indictments. That drew another rebuke from Democrats around the country for comparing personal legal struggles to the historical injustices Black people have faced in the US.

The former president has nonetheless already vanquished more than a dozen major Republican challengers and now has only Haley left. She has maintained strong fundraising and notched her first primary victory over the weekend in Washington, D.C., a Democrat-run city with few registered Republicans. Trump scoffed that Haley had been “crowned queen of the swamp.”

“We can do better than two 80-year-old candidates for president,” Haley said at a rally on Monday (March 4) in the Houston suburbs.

Trump’s victories have shown vulnerabilities

Trump's victories, however dominating, have shown vulnerabilities with influential voter blocs, especially in college towns like Hanover, New Hampshire, home to Dartmouth College, or Ann Arbor, where the University of Michigan is located, as well as areas with high concentrations of independents. That includes Minnesota, a state Trump did not carry in his otherwise overwhelming Super Tuesday performance in 2016.

Seth De Penning, a self-described conservative-leaning independent, voted on Tuesday morning (March 5) in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, for Haley, he said, because the GOP “needs a course correction.” De Penning, 40, called his choice a vote of conscience and said he has never voted for Trump because of concerns about his temperament and character.

Other electoral contests

While much of the focus is on the presidential race, there are also important down-ballot contests. California voters will choose candidates who will compete to fill the Senate seat long held by Dianne Feinstein. The governor's race will take shape in North Carolina, a state that both parties are fiercely contesting ahead of November. And in Los Angeles, a progressive prosecutor is attempting to fend off an intense reelection challenge in a contest that could serve as a barometer of the politics of crime.

(With agency inputs)