Former U.S. president, Donald Trump, cemented his position as the Republican Party’s all-but-certain nominee for November’s general election after sweeping the Super Tuesday primary contests.
“It is called it `Super Tuesday’ for a reason. This is a big one,’’ Trump said in his victory speech, delivered at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
As the crowd chanted “USA! USA,’’ Trump said voters had delivered him an amazing night.
The results set the stage for a White House rematch between Trump and U.S. President, Joe Biden, who as the first-term incumbent, had no real rivals for the Democratic Party’s nomination.
Trump easily defeated his last remaining major challenger, Nikki Haley, in primaries held in a slew of states, including California, Texas, Maine, Massachusetts, Virginia and North Carolina.
Other states include; Oklahoma, North Dakota, Minnesota, Colorado, Alabama and Tennessee, according to unanimous projections by broadcasters based on initial vote counts.
Haley was only projected to have won the small north-eastern state of Vermont.
There was no suspense as Biden notched wins across the Democratic primaries held Tuesday except in the South Pacific territory of American Somoa, where the little known entrepreneur Jason Palmer prevailed.
“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.
“With a division, and darkness that defined his term in office? Biden asked in a statement.
Millions of people voted in the polls held in 16 of the 50 states, plus American Samoa.
Super Tuesday marked the largest single-day of nominating contests in the presidential primary campaign.
In the primary process, which began in January in Iowa, candidates were awarded delegates with each state they won.
One-third of the total delegates available for the Republican nomination were up for grabs on Tuesday.
A candidate needed at least 1,215 delegates out of 2,429 to secure their spot on the November ballot.
The nomination would then be made official at the Republican Party convention in July.
In spite of his overwhelming win, it was not possible for Trump to secure all the delegates he needed on Tuesday.
Before she became his 2024 opponent, Haley served in Trump’s administration as his ambassador to the United Nations.
She has waged a long-shot bid appealing to Republican moderates and independents but her campaign had not been able to gain enough momentum to pose a serious threat to Trump.
She lost the primary in her home state of South Carolina last month.
Tuesday’s contests were seen as her last stand.
Her losses fuelled the belief that her candidacy was no longer viable, with political watchers widely expecting her to drop out of the race, though the primary process would continue in the weeks to come.
Haley’s campaign said the results of the Super Tuesday contests showed that the Republican Party still remained deeply divided.
“Unity is not achieved by simply claiming ‘we’re united.’ Today, in state after state, there remains a large bloc of Republican primary voters who are expressing deep concerns about Donald Trump.
The Haley campaign said this in a statement.
Neither Haley nor her campaign addressed whether she planned on staying in the race.
So far, the 2024 election had been dominated by domestic issues including immigration, crime, reproductive rights and the economy, with many saying they still feel the pinch of inflation.
Worries about Biden’s age, he is 81 and the oldest sitting president in U.S. history have increasingly weighed on his campaign amid physical and verbal blunders.
Trump, who at 77 is only four years younger than Biden, is facing deep legal problems.
He had been indicted in four separate criminal cases and charged with a total of 91 felony counts.
They included his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which Biden won.
In his Mar-a-Lago speech on Tuesday night, Trump repeated many of the same themes he hit on at his campaign rallies, including his demand that the U.S. border with Mexico be totally shut to migrants.
“In some ways,’’ he said, the U.S. had become third-world country. (dpa)
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