Super Tuesday Takeaways: Trump rolls toward GOP presidential nomination
Former President Donald Trump racked up another series of impressive Republican primary wins over Nikki Haley on Super Tuesday as President Biden also rolled to barely contested wins.
With Trump rolling to very lopsided wins over Haley in delegate-rich states from coast to coast, there were few signs that Republican voters are having second thoughts about handing the nomination to the man who lost to Biden last time.
Trump was poised to declare victory yet again from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida while Haley remained behind closed doors at her home in South Carolina.
Here are several takeaways:
Trump steamrolls from coast to coast
Trump won in big states and small, in the Deep South and Northeast and pretty much everywhere in between.
The MAGA leader strengthened his already vice-like grip on the GOP nomination race by sweeping to wins even in potentially problematic states like Virginia and Massachusetts, which boast more independent-minded and better-educated Republican electorates.
The vast Super Tuesday map with elections in 15 states, including sprawling powerhouses like California and Texas, always favored Trump, who commands legendary loyalty among the Republican base.
But Haley might have hoped that she could bolster her standing with affluent voters in places like Colorado, northern Virginia or suburban Houston. That simply didn’t happen, at least not in the numbers she needed to trip up Trump.
The only state Haley had won on Super Tuesday was tiny, deep-blue Vermont, which awarded her 17 delegates — the fewest number of delegates assigned by a state holding elections on Super Tuesday.
What will Nikki do now?
As the results rolled in, the biggest outstanding question of the night was how or if Haley would respond to the punishing defeats.
Haley’s campaign gave no suggestion whether she would make a statement Tuesday night or perhaps Wednesday morning.
With Super Tuesday done, Haley will need to decide whether to stay in the race against Trump even as any chance of derailing his march to the nomination seems to have slipped away.
Haley has no campaign events scheduled, a big change from previous primary nights when she had laid out plans to compete in future contests.
The former UN ambassador has recently ramped up attacks on Trump as unelectable and has said she’s not sure if she will endorse Trump if he is the GOP nominee.
The Biden-Trump rematch starts now
A surprising number of voters in both parties have stubbornly clung to the belief that someone other than Trump or Biden will be the nominees.
After Super Tuesday, they can forget about it.
Trump is on track to come close to a majority of Republican delegates after sweeping to big wins. Ditto for Biden.
So the president and the former president are all but assured of being nominated by their parties’ conventions in the summer, regardless of the political parlor games suggesting they could somehow be replaced.
Biden cruises to easy wins
President Biden rolled to easy wins in all the Super Tuesday primaries that were declared.
The Democratic incumbent was running up the score from coast to coast against nominal opposition from Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minnesota) and Marianne Williamson.
Biden was expected to face some protest write-in votes in Minnesota over his handling of Israel’s war in Gaza, but not on the same scale as the 13% who voted for uncommitted delegates in Michigan last week.
The president was watching the results from the White House where aides said he was working on Thursday’s State of the Union address, which will double as a kickoff for his general election campaign against Trump.
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