Haley wins surprise Vermont victory as Biden and Trump dominate Super Tuesday

Joe Biden and Donald Trump largely cruised to easy victories on Super Tuesday, as official confirmation of a rerun of the 2020 US presidential race – a rematch that a majority of voters say they don’t want – gets closer.

The US has not witnessed a primary campaign season with so little competitive tension since political primaries began to dominate the nomination process in the 1970s. Neither the current president nor the former president secured the nomination of their respective parties, but both are likely to do so within the next two weeks. Biden won every contest except American Samoa, while Trump won everything except Vermont, where Nikki Haley scored a close surprise victory.

The Wall Street Journal reported that sources from the Haley campaign said on Wednesday she had decided to drop out of the race. She had scheduled a news conference for 10am where she was expected to make the announcement. Earlier on Tuesday, Haley vowed to stay in as long as she remained “competitive”.

Both presumptive nominees took shots at each other in statements and speeches on Tuesday evening. Biden said Trump was focused on “revenge and retribution” and “determined to destroy democracy”.

“Tonight’s results leave the American people with a clear choice: are we going to keep moving forward or will we allow Donald Trump to drag us backwards into the chaos, division, and darkness that defined his term in office?” Biden said.

In a victory speech at Mar-a-Lago, meanwhile, Trump praised his wins, stating that there had “never been anything like this” and again attacked migrants, falsely claiming that US cities were “being overrun by migrant crime”. The former president has frequently derided migrants and made baseless and racist comments that they are dangerous.

Biden sweeps, but with warning signs

Biden and Trump won their respective primaries in California, Virginia, North Carolina, Maine, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, Colorado and Minnesota. Biden also won the Democratic caucus in Iowa and Vermont, but lost American Samoa, while Haley’s victory in the Republican primary in Vermont was her second of 2024, after also winning the District of Columbia.

Biden requires 1,968 delegates to secure the Democratic nomination. Going into Super Tuesday, he held 206. Primaries and caucuses on Tuesday offered another 1,420. Assuming Biden continues to sweep through primary contests, the earliest he could secure the nomination on the first ballot would be 19 March with results from Florida, Illinois, Kansas and Ohio.

Democratic candidates can win delegates with 15% or more of the vote in a congressional district. California’s 424 Democratic delegates were the richest haul of the evening.

Votes for write-in candidates typically take days to tabulate, but observers have been acutely watching for “uncommitted” or “none of the above” protest votes to register displeasure with the Biden administration’s policy on the Israel-Hamas war. The campaign has gained more ground after a strong showing in Michigan last week.

William Galvin, secretary of state for Massachusetts, told reporters on Tuesday that if enough voters selected “no preference”, a delegate may be assigned to that option.

Trump marches on, but party rifts visible

Trump entered Super Tuesday with 273 delegates, requiring 1,215 needed to win the nomination outright at the Republican National Convention. Super Tuesday offered 865 delegates, but Nikki Haley’s continued campaign has prevented Trump from claiming all of them. With Tuesday night’s results, the earliest Trump could secure the nomination is also 19 March with Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Kansas and Ohio.

Trump gained a late-game reprieve in Colorado when the US supreme court unanimously ruled on Monday that states cannot unilaterally kick a presidential candidate off the ballot using the 14th amendment and was expected to win the state.

Haley’s victory in the District of Columbia primary on Sunday made her the first woman to win a Republican presidential primary in history, although only about 2,000 people voted. Vermont was her first state win.

Notable state races hold more upsets

California voters have been focused on the state’s highly contested down-ballot race to fill the seat held by Dianne Feinstein, the late US senator. California places the top two candidates from the primary in a runoff.

Adam Schiff, the centrist Democratic congressman and longtime Trump antagonist, was declared the first-place winner. He will face off with Republican Steve Garvey, a former professional baseball player, in November.

But voters in California were unenthusiastic and analysts projected the state could see its lowest voter turnout in history.

“I’m not excited about any of the issues, I just needed to take a walk today so I decided to drop off my ballot,” said Daniel, a 50-year-old voter who declined to share his last name.

Texas held state and federal legislative primaries on Tuesday, presenting Texan voters with a Republican grudge match over state politics. Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, has been on a revenge tour to punish legislators who voted for his impeachment on corruption allegations last year, issuing a long list of endorsed challengers to incumbents.

About half of a slate of endorsed challengers have either claimed victory or are taking incumbents to a runoff, including a challenger to the powerful Texas speaker of the house, Dade Phelan. Late returns suggested Phelan will face the Trump-backed challenger David Covey.

Four claimed open seats and seven challengers won primaries outright, while seven others will go on to runoffs. One of those runoffs will feature Katrina Pearson, Trump’s former spokeswoman, who is neck-and-neck with Justin Holland, a state representative, in the suburban Dallas district.

Ted Cruz, the US senator, secured the Republican nomination with no major GOP competitors. The Democratic representative Colin Allred beat out Roland Gutierrez, who has emerged as a national gun control advocate following the Uvalde shooting, to face Cruz in November.

Alabama voters in a newly redrawn second congressional district pushed Democrats Anthony Daniels and Shomari Figures to a runoff while Republicans Dick Brewbaker and Caroleene Dobson also face a runoff. The US supreme court forced Alabama to redraw its congressional map last year, declaring it a racial gerrymander that illegally diminished the political power of Black voters. As a result, two white Republican congressmen – Jerry Carl and Barry Moore – faced each other for a single seat after their districts were redrawn. Moore beat out incumbent Carl in the first district.

More than 6,000 voters in the second district received postcards with incorrect voting information ahead of the primary, which a county official attributed to a software error.

Notably Tom Parker, chief justice of Alabama’s supreme court, who issued a religiously inflected ruling on the personhood of frozen embryos last month, was not on the ballot tonight. Alabama bars judges over the age of 70 from running for re-election; his term ends in 2025. The winner of the Republican nomination to succeed Parker is Sarah Stewart, an associate justice on the Alabama supreme court who was part of the court’s majority ruling on the embryo case.

In North Carolina, the Republican state legislature redrew congressional maps last year after winning a majority on the state supreme court. As a result, the current delegation of 14 congresspeople will probably change from a 7-7 split to a 10-4 Republican majority and the most competitive seats have attracted sharp primary contests, particularly the 13th district.

North Carolina’s first congressional district in the state’s coastal north-east has historically held a Democratic, mostly Black majority. Lawmakers redrew it to be much more competitive for a Republican candidate. Representative Don Davis beat the 2022 Republican nominee, businesswoman and perennial candidate Sandy Smith, by four points. Smith this year lost the Republican primary to challenger Laurie Buckhout. .

Meanwhile Mark Robinson, the lieutenant governor, has won the Republican nomination for governor, to succeed North Carolina’s term-limited Democratic governor, Roy Cooper. Robinson, North Carolina’s first Black lieutenant governor, has a history of sexist and inflammatory comments, particularly about Jews.

Robinson’s opponent in November will be Democrat Josh Stein, the North Carolina attorney general who would be the state’s first Jewish governor.