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Today in the United States the so-called “Super Tuesday” is being held, i.e. the day of the primaries for choosing the presidential candidate in which voting takes place in several states at the same time (this year there are 15). Super Tuesday is usually highly anticipated because around a third of the total delegates are assigned, i.e. the people who will choose each party’s candidate for the presidential elections during the summer “conventions”. This year, however, the situation is a little different and there is little doubt about how the vote will go.
The two candidates who were already considered favourites, Joe Biden for the Democrats and Donald Trump for the Republicans, have practically no rivals anymore: Biden because he is the outgoing president, and historically the outgoing presidents who run for re-election manage to easily get to the “nomination” ”; Trump because since the beginning of the primaries he has managed to win almost everywhere (except in one state) and has practically eliminated the chances of Nikki Haley, the only other real candidate left for the Republicans, of recovering the disadvantage. Haley may also retire after Super Tuesday.
Both parties vote in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia, and in the U.S. territories of American Samoa. Republicans also vote in Alaska, Democrats in Iowa. In the case of the Republicans, the method of allocating delegates varies from state to state, and in many of those on Tuesday it is majority. The Democrats always follow the proportional method.
Donald Trump during a rally (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
For the Republicans, the total delegates who will participate in the convention are 2,429: therefore 1,215 are needed to obtain the nomination and on Super Tuesday there are 865 up for grabs. Trump collected 244 delegates in the states where he previously voted (Haley 43), his electoral committee plans to add 773 on Super Tuesday and officially reach the necessary quota on March 12, when voting will take place in Hawaii, Mississippi, Georgia and Washington state, or a week later, on the 19th (when 5 other states will vote). Biden must instead gather 1,968 candidates: today there are 1,420 up for grabs, but his nomination for the Democrats has never been in question.
Despite the obvious outcome, there are still reasons why it’s worth watching how Super Tuesday goes.
Trump has demonstrated that he has consolidated support among the most radical and conservative Republican base, but in view of the November elections he may struggle to convince the moderates and undecideds who have most often sided with Haley. So far Trump has had the worst results in the suburbs of big cities and among women, while the polls most favorable to Haley were carried out in Vermont and Virginia, states where the gap from Trump seems smaller (but we are still talking about over twenty percentage points). In these two states the Republican electorate is more moderate and even voters who are not registered for any party and therefore do not formally recognize themselves as Republicans can vote.
Joe Biden during an election event (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
In recent days in various states (California, Colorado, North Carolina, Minnesota and Vermont) supporters of the Democratic Party have organized campaigns to vote “blank ballot”, as happened in Michigan, to show their dissent on how the Biden administration is managing the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip and on the support guaranteed to date to the state of Israel. The campaign in Michigan, much more structured, had led to a 13 percent of “uncommitted” (blank ballots), a figure that was not sensational but still relevant, especially in a state in the balance in the next November elections, in which victory could be also decided by several tens of thousands of votes.
The latest polls are not particularly reassuring for the Democrats: the one developed by Bloomberg News in collaboration with Morning Consult indicates that Biden would trail Trump in seven of the swing states (Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada and Wisconsin) and behind by 5 points nationally (48% to 43% in favor of Trump) . A survey of New York Times and Siena College published on Saturday instead reported the worst approval ratings ever for Biden, with 47 percent of voters considering his performance “very negative”.
On Monday the US Supreme Court, America’s highest federal court, he established unanimously that Trump will be able to run in the Republican Party primary elections in Colorado, where he had been considered “ineligible” because he was directly involved in the assault on Congress on January 6, 2021. The decision also applies to all other states that had the intention to follow the Colorado line, but it does not close the legal issues of Trump, accused on 91 charges in four different trials. The one considered most important, linked to his role in the attack on Congress, is unlikely to reach a verdict before the elections, because it also depends on a new ruling from the Supreme Court, called to rule on a request for immunity from the former president.
Donald Trump and Texas Governor Greg Abbott during a visit to the Mexican border (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
After Super Tuesday, a new phase of the electoral campaign will probably begin in view of the presidential elections. So far, both candidates have tried to mobilize their electoral base by pointing to the leader of the other party as a “threat” that needed to be opposed. In his commercials and statements, Biden has mostly defined Trump as a “danger for democracy”, for the right to abortion and for personal freedoms, while the Republicans have attacked the president above all for his very advanced age and on the issue of migration emergency on the border with Mexico.