Donald Trump won Virginia and North Carolina as the first states closed their polls on Super Tuesday, as he hopes for a huge run of victories that will knock rival Nikki Haley out of the race.
Haley was looking for a win in Virginia similar to her victory in Washington DC, her only victory so far in the Republican nominating contest. She hoped that Democratic crossover votes, moderate Republican voters and independent voters would join her side.
Trump is still waiting for results in Vermont, the third of 15 states where polls are closed on the biggest primary day of the year. Millions of voters will cast their ballots and hundreds of delegates are at stake – the biggest gain for any candidate yet.
Guests wait before Donald Trump speaks at a Super Tuesday election party at Mar-a-Lago
In the wake of Tuesday’s election, Joe Biden and Donald Trump are expected to move much closer to their parties’ respective nominations.
Biden started the evening by winning Iowa, where Democrats previously held their contest but announced the results on Tuesday.
Trump wants to defeat the fifteen states that will hold Republican primaries on Tuesday. He still faces opposition from Haley, but a string of victories will make it mathematically nearly impossible to catch the former president.
Tuesday’s elections will award more than a third of Republican delegates — and more than 70% of the number needed to secure the nomination.
Haley pledged to stay in the race until the Super Tuesday contests but has made no other promises, and her campaign has no public events planned on Tuesday or beyond.
She’s at her home in South Carolina. Trump is expected to address supporters at Mar-a-Lago later Tuesday evening.
Both the Biden and Trump camps are preparing for a rematch, tooThe earliest nominations for his party are March 12 for Trump and March 19 for Biden.
But after Tuesday, the battle for the general election will effectively begin. Both men are ready.
“We have to beat Biden — he’s the worst president in history,” Trump told Fox & Friends on Tuesday.
“If we lose this election, you’re going to come back to Donald Trump,” Biden said on the DeDe in the Morning radio show in North Carolina. “The way he talks, the way he acted, the way he treated the African-American community, I think it’s a disgrace.”
Donald Trump (left) hopes for a big win on Super Tuesday, knocking Nikki Haley (right) out of the race
Voters pick up their ballots at the Philomont Fire Station on primary day in Philomont, Virginia
However, voters appear unenthusiastic about a repeat of the 2020 election, which Biden won and Trump wrongly claimed victory. Polls show that a majority of voters wanted an option other than Biden or Trump.
So now each campaign will have to focus on rallying their base and convincing independent voters to come to the polls this November.
On Saturday, Biden and Trump will hold separate campaign events in Georgia, a critical battleground state. Biden became the first Democrat since Bill Clinton to win the 2020 election. Trump was convinced he won the election and now faces federal and state charges over his efforts to overturn the results there.