Nikki Haley is reportedly planning to drop out of the presidential campaign. Follow us for live updates.
Donald J. Trump racked up victories across the country on Super Tuesday, and by the end of the night it was clear that the former president had left Nikki Haley in the delegate dust.
Mr. Trump’s victories from coast to coast — in California, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and beyond — brought a new mathematical certainty to what had been a political reality for some time: He is all but certain to win the Republican Party will win nomination for president.
Ms. Haley plans to make it official Wednesday morning with an event where she will drop out but not immediately offer her support to Mr. Trump, according to several people familiar with her plans. Instead, she will say he needs to work to win over her voters.
That’s important because Mr. Trump’s often dominant national victories on Tuesday hide signs that he is vulnerable to the fall. In the lively suburbs, he showed some of the same weakness that cost him his entry into the White House in 2020.
The Super Tuesday presidential primary, as well as a series of congressional races in key districts, many of which are still undecided, offered the most comprehensive look yet into the preferences of voters from both parties heading into the 2024 election. Here are five takeaways from the results:
An unstoppable Mr. Trump rolls on.
About a third of the nation voted Tuesday, but there was little drama. Shortly after the polls closed, news outlets called state by state, just as they have done since Mr. Trump hit the 50 percent mark in the Iowa caucuses.
The exception was Vermont, where Ms. Haley won her first state victory (she won Washington, D.C., over the weekend). But that was a small island in a sea of Trump landslides in more than a dozen other states, including Alabama, where he was over 80 percent.
There was so little to shoot for Ms. Haley on Tuesday that she made no public statements at all and watched behind closed doors in Charleston, South Carolina, the return embassy as well as the accumulation of delegates.
In a sign that Trump is already more focused on the fall, he recently picked primary states that also happen to be battlegrounds for his campaign rallies in November. For example, he traveled to North Carolina last weekend before Super Tuesday and is traveling to Georgia next weekend before the March 12 primary.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump hosted a party at Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Florida. (Data shows he has spent about $315,000 in campaign funds at Mar-a-Lago since announcing his 2024 candidacy.)
“It was a big night,” he explained.
Mr Trump’s big night – namely securing the delegates needed to secure his nomination – could come as early as March 12 or 19.
There are warning signs for Trump in the Haley vote.
Currently, the Biden team is examining Ms. Haley’s performance in suburban areas almost as closely as the Trump operation, if not more closely.
The key fall battleground that voted on Tuesday was North Carolina, a state that Mr. Trump narrowly won in 2020. And while Mr. Trump won the primary there with about 75 percent of the vote, he was the weakest in surrounding counties. Raleigh and Charlotte are only ahead by seven percentage points in Mecklenburg County.
The exit poll told a different part of the story.
A majority of Ms. Haley’s primary voters said they would vote more against her opponent than for her, a sign of anti-Trump motivation that could last into November. And even in defeat, she had a nearly two-to-one lead among moderate voters. Their problem was that moderates only make up 20 percent of voters in a GOP primary. But in a close general election, these voters could be more important.
Overall, about one in four Republican primary voters in North Carolina said they would be unhappy if Mr. Trump won the nomination.
“In state after state, there continues to be a large bloc of Republican primary voters who express deep concerns about Donald Trump,” Olivia Perez-Cubas, a spokeswoman for the Haley campaign, said late Tuesday.
Ms. Haley is not expected to immediately endorse Mr. Trump by leaving, as did another main rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. She will challenge Mr. Trump to win the support of her voters, who she described as “not a tiny group” after the South Carolina primary.
The educational divide within the Republican Party was particularly stark Tuesday. Mr. Trump was narrowly ahead of Republican primary voters with college degrees in North Carolina (51 percent to 45 percent), but he edged out Ms. Haley (80 percent to 15 percent) among Republican voters without a college degree.
In other words, Mr. Trump’s base delivers him the nomination. But he may need to attract other voters to his coalition to win in the fall.
The Democrats hurt Biden – again.
Mr. Biden, who faced only nominal opposition for the Democratic nomination, also won significant victories across the country: Alabama, Maine, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia, to name a few. By the end of the night, he swept all 15 states.
But once again there were big lights for a president who is struggling to rally the entire party behind him. Nearly 20 percent of Democrats in Minnesota voted noncommittally, in an apparent protest vote against Mr. Biden’s support for Israel’s military response to the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack. Mr. Biden won less than two-thirds of the vote in Hennepin County. Home of Minneapolis.
The protest was a continuation of a campaign that began last week in Michigan, when 13 percent of Democrats voted noncommittal. The larger share in a state with fewer Arab-American voters — but a large and active progressive wing — suggested that the movement of voters pushing Mr. Biden for a policy change was gaining traction.
There were other signs too. In Colorado, the non-binding vote was 8 percent. The “no preference” vote in North Carolina reached nearly 13 percent; This is worth noting as Mr. Biden considers contesting a state that Mr. Trump narrowly won in 2020.
It’s far from clear what these voters will do in November. But should they support Mr. Trump, support a third-party candidate or simply stay home, they could cost Mr. Biden a close election.
Minnesota wasn’t the only state that somewhat marred Mr. Biden’s night. In a minor humiliation for the incumbent president, Mr. Biden pulled level with Jason Palmer, an entrepreneur, in the delegate race in American Samoa. (It’s really okay if you’ve never heard of him tonight.) There are no Electoral College elections in American Samoa.
A Trump speech provides a preview of dark topics for the fall.
When Mr. Trump won Iowa in January, he brought aides on stage for an impromptu celebration. At the next contest, he did the same, inviting fans to New Hampshire to be by his side. And then again in South Carolina.
But on Super Tuesday, Mr. Trump took the stage alone. Then he never mentioned Ms. Haley’s name.
The images and messages were unmistakable: Mr. Trump is focused on Mr. Biden and the pursuit of a case that has been obscured in America since his departure, with a particular focus on immigration, inflation and international affairs.
“Frankly, our country is dying,” Trump said.
He spoke with typical exaggeration, but tapped into a real feeling. The latest New York Times/Siena College poll found that 65 percent of registered voters believe the country is headed in the wrong direction — including 42 percent of Democrats.
A week after Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden both traveled to the border, the former president repeatedly returned to the theme that now animates much of his short speech.
He also tried to make his case for his handling of Covid (“This was never attributed to us”), the stock market (“It’s doing well because our poll numbers are so much higher than Joe Biden’s”) and the country’s global standing had collapsed since his departure (“The world is laughing at us”).
California’s top two primary system was an early loser.
There were two winners in Tuesday night’s California Senate primary: Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat, and Steve Garvey, the former Los Angeles Dodger and Republican.
But there was also a clear loser: the nonpartisan, two-leader primary system that California voters introduced in 2010. The system was sold as a good government reform aimed at reducing partisanship and promoting centrist politicians. Instead, it proved – again – to be just as susceptible to partisan political gamesmanship as traditional primaries.
Mr. Schiff, one of two leading Democrats competing for Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s seat, and his allies spent millions of dollars to bolster Mr. Garvey.
Mr. Garvey, who has barely campaigned, has little chance of becoming the next senator from overwhelmingly Democratic California. But Mr. Schiff wanted to run in the runoff against a Republican, rather than Rep. Katie Porter, a Democrat with significant support among progressives.
Supporters of Ms. Porter also tried to game the system, although not as aggressively as Mr. Schiff, by boosting the prospects of another Republican on the ballot, Eric Early, of withdrawing Republican support from Mr. Garvey.
An unintended result: Republican voters, increasingly marginalized in statewide elections as California became increasingly Democratic, ended up having at least a small say in choosing the state’s next senator.
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2024-03-06 12:53:59
www.nytimes.com
