Trump sweeps Super Tuesday and will face Biden in November

The forecasts have been fulfilled.

As the polls anticipated, Super Tuesday is being a triumphant ride for Donald Trump.

The former president has not yet achieved the virtual nomination mathematically, but he is giving a definitive blow of authority.

Trump has been leaving behind all the Republican rivals who have dared to challenge him.

Several withdrew before the primaries even began.

Investor Vivek Ramaswamy and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis threw in the towel in the first round, after her failure in the Iowa

caucuses

. Nikki Haley has remained in the fight, but Trump is knocking her out this Tuesday.

Now comes the moment of truth, the definitive battle for the White House.

As in 2020, he will once again face Joe Biden, who has also swept the Democratic Super Tuesday in the absence of true rivals.

He will be in the presidential elections on November 5, in 245 days.

Trump has come out to claim victory at his Mar-a-Lago mansion, in Palm Beach, Florida, where he has described Biden as the worst president in history (a position that historians actually award to him).

“In some senses we are a Third World country, we are a Third World country on our borders,” he has said.

Alone on stage and with fifteen United States flags behind him, he gave a somewhat disjointed speech, with comings and goings about the border, inflation, crime, covid... He avoided quoting Nikki Haley, although he has requested unity from the party.

He, the most divisive figure in decades of American politics, has complained that the country is too divided.

“We have to win the elections, because if we lose the elections we will no longer have a country,” he said in another of his usual phrases.

He ended his nearly 20-minute speech with his motto, Make America Great Again.

“We will make our country greater than ever in history.”

For its part, the Biden campaign has released a statement from the president celebrating his victory and attacking Trump.

“Are we going to keep moving forward or will we allow Donald Trump to drag us back into the chaos, division and darkness that defined his tenure?” he asks.

Trump has already scored victory in Texas and North Carolina, the Super Tuesday States that contribute the most delegates with the exception of California, where the counting has not yet begun.

In reality, he has already won in 11 of the 12 States that have the scrutiny a little advanced and has clearly won in them.

Nikki Haley has only resisted in Vermont, where she has prevailed in a very tight scrutiny.

It is a state that votes Democratic in the presidential elections and has a moderate Republican governor, the most favorable terrain for Haley.

Until now, the candidate had only won the testimonial Republican primaries in Washington DC, where only about 2,000 members voted.

Haley, however, has been clearly defeated in Massachusetts and Maine, the other two New England states.

Biden has even less opposition on the Democratic side, with a clean sweep of victories, most of them with more than 80% or 90% of the vote.

It is being the least contested Super Tuesday in history.

Nothing to do with the fierce battles between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in 2008, but not even with the competition between Trump, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio in 2016 or the one that pitted Biden against Bernie Sanders in 2020. In reality, no Super Tuesday until now I had witnessed such an overwhelming (and so predictable) result.

Millions of citizens voted at the polls, by mail, through electronic voting screens or even without getting out of the car, as in some places in California.

Despite the facilities, the data indicates that participation has been low, probably due to the low results.

Election night began with the release of the results of the Iowa Democratic primaries. After the chaos of four years ago and under pressure from Joe Biden, the Democratic Party eliminated the caucuses and its members had been voting by mail since December 12. January, but the result had been left for this Tuesday.

Biden has swept 91% of the votes and has taken all 40 delegates.

Then, the States have fallen one after another on the side of Trump and Biden as the scrutiny progressed, with that exception of Vermont.

Despite the overwhelming dominance, there are small warning signs for the two candidates.

Biden has achieved more than 80% and 90% of the votes in most states, but in Minnesota the phenomenon of votes for uncommitted delegates has reappeared, a kind of blank protest vote, which has reached around at 15%.

Added to that was 9% for the local candidate Dean Philips, so Biden has

only

achieved 72% there.

In Colorado, those votes have also been 7%.

Biden has had a nominal defeat in the territory of American Samoa, where businessman Jason Palmer has won.

American Samoa does not vote in the November presidential election, but still sends 11 delegates to the Democratic convention.

On Trump's part, although his advantage is overwhelming, the question is how many of those voters who vote for Nikki Haley will support him when November 5 arrives.

The former president appears weaker in more moderate counties, with higher levels of education.

The specter that haunts the Republicans, and about which Haley has repeatedly warned, is that Trump could once again scare away independent and moderate voters when push comes to shove, as happened in 2028, 2020 and 2022. In several states, Nikki Haley has surpassed 25%.

The allocation of delegates is slower, due to the different allocation rules in each State, which sometimes required waiting for the vote to progress further.

Even so, both Biden and Trump have swept in that section and are approaching the threshold of the nomination.

Trump will have a shot at him with the 161 delegates up for grabs on March 12, when voting takes place in Georgia, Hawaii, Mississippi and Washington State.

As the Democratic calendar is somewhat behind the Republican one, Biden will still have to wait another week, until March 19 (when Arizona, Illinois, Kansas and Ohio vote), even if he continues to win in all the States.

In the Republican case, 874 of the 2,429 delegates of the convention are elected.

Trump needs 1,215.

On the part of the Democratic Party, 1,420 of the 1,968 necessary delegates are assigned.

The race is decided, but half of the States still have to vote.

The remaining primaries will be practically irrelevant.

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