Presidential campaign
“Super Tuesday”: US primaries in many states
“Super Tuesday” is considered an important milestone in the US presidential election campaign. photo
© Paul Sancya/AP/dpa
“Super Tuesday” is considered an important milestone in the US presidential election campaign. But this time the voting marathon is a little less tense. Because the result has been apparent for a long time.
The vote will be taken to decide who should run as a candidate for each party in the presidential election at the beginning of November. The candidates are then officially chosen at party conferences in the summer.
Trump on the road to success
Among the Republicans, former President Donald Trump and former US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley are in a duel for their party’s nomination. Trump is clearly in the lead, has easily won almost all of the primaries so far and is also the clear favorite in the remaining votes. Haley had previously won one of the primaries for the first time, but only in the capital district of Washington, which is considered a stronghold of Trump opponents and does not have much numerical significance in the race.
Trump is ahead in the polls. The 52-year-old Haley is given no chance of achieving any notable successes or even of winning her party’s candidacy.
For the Democrats, incumbent Joe Biden wants to run for another term. The 81-year-old has no serious competition in his party’s internal race. At the moment everything indicates that Biden and Trump will ultimately compete against each other again.
Victory for Trump in another primary election
As expected, Trump achieved his most recent victory in the primary election in the state of North Dakota. According to forecasts from Fox News and NBC, the 77-year-old clearly won in the northern US state. After almost all votes were counted, Trump got just under 85 percent, his competitor Nikki Haley, who is considered to be a bit more moderate, got a good 14 percent. Additional votes went to other candidates.
The rural state with the capital Bismarck is conservative and has around 775,000 residents. North Dakota has no prominent significance in the race for the candidacy. There are only 29 of the 2,429 delegates up for grabs. If Trump still has more than 60 percent of the votes behind him at the end of the count, all of the state’s delegate votes will go to him. Voting was not carried out in the traditional way at polling stations, but rather at small party meetings – so-called caucus meetings.
Supreme Court rules in Trump’s favor
And Trump was able to claim another significant success. The Republican successfully fended off attempts by his opponents to exclude him from the presidential race. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Colorado and other states have no authority to remove Republicans from the party primary ballot. Instead, this lies with the US Congress. This part of the decision was no longer made unanimously. For four judges, this determination went too far. With the decision, the court provided clarity shortly before the important pre-election day “Super Tuesday”.
Although the decision was not a surprise, it was still of great consequence. Plaintiffs have been trying for some time in various states to prevent Trump from taking part in the primaries and to have the 77-year-old’s name removed from ballot papers.
The background to the dispute is the unprecedented attack on the US parliament building almost exactly three years ago. Trump supporters violently stormed the Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021. Congress met there to formally confirm Democrat Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election. Trump still doesn’t recognize it today.