PALM BEACH, FLA. – All signs point to President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump feuding sufficiently representative Super Tuesday contests in 16 states and American Samoa — to mathematically ensure a rematch of the 2020 election battle.
For more than a year, polls have shown Americans are anticipating a continuation of the enthusiasm typically reserved for drug-free colonoscopies. But Republicans have little interest in taking their standards away from Trump, and Biden, like most modern presidents, faces no serious competition for his party’s nod.
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“The 2024 nominations may have been unknowingly locked out of November 2020,” said Republican strategist Matthew Bartlett.
“With the former president and the current president, both parties are gearing up and gearing up for a rematch that looks brutal, vindictive and perhaps despicable,” he said, noting that the winner would not be eligible to run in 2028. This will “eventually lead to the oldest president ever inaugurated and he will finish his lame duck term.”
Before Super Tuesday, Haley won only one major competition — in Washington, D.C., was one of Trump’s weakest showings in 2016. Tuesday, Trump won quickly In races called early, including North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Maine, Alabama, Massachusetts, Colorado and Minnesota.
NBC News polls in Virginia and North Carolina showed Trump beating Haley among self-identified conservatives, evangelicals and white non-college voters — three-quarters or more of each of those groups in Virginia. 80 percent of them are in North Carolina.
In what has become a familiar pattern, Haley fared better with self-identified moderates, who gave her 66 percent of the vote in Virginia and 62 percent in North Carolina. His success with a smaller set of Republicans has raised questions about whether Trump can keep them in the GOP camp for the general election.
Neither Trump nor Biden can lose a majority of their party’s voters in November, and with Biden sweeping the primary map on Tuesday with wins in Iowa, Virginia, North Carolina, Vermont and Oklahoma, Democrats have reason to worry about the president’s standing. , Tennessee, Massachusetts, Maine, Arkansas, Texas, Alabama, Colorado and Minnesota. (The one race he lost was a junior caucus in American Samoa.)
Recent polls show a close race between Trump and Biden in the popular vote. But given Biden’s narrow 2020 electoral margin — he won by nearly 43,000 votes spread across three states, though he led Trump by 4.5 percentage points in the popular vote — some Democrats worry that his lead is slipping away.
Their fears were highlighted when last week Bloomberg news and Morning Consult released a series of state polls showing Trump ahead of Biden in each of the key battlegrounds expected to collectively determine the winner.
“Biden is starting with a clear deficit in almost every battleground state and at the national level,” said Chris Kofinis, a Democratic strategist who has worked on multiple presidential campaigns.
“Here’s the brutal reality: The strategy that Biden and the Democrats are using to undermine Trump is simply not working, and it’s clear that a real course correction is needed, both in terms of message and strategy,” Kofinis said. “Betting on Trump’s implosion is not a strategy and [Trump primary rival] Nikki Haley will find out.”
There are signs that Biden wants to change his trajectory. He recently moved Jennifer O’Malley Dillon From the position of deputy chief of staff in the White House to the election campaign. He did not bring back the 2020 title — “campaign manager” — but Democrats said they expect him to bring a steady hand to the operation and the confidence of the president. Mike Donilon, Biden’s longtime political right-hand man, also left the White House to campaign.
“Super Tuesday will help cement the choice facing voters in November between the dangerous chaos of Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s fight for freedom, democracy and our fundamental rights as Americans,” said Lauren Hitt, a spokeswoman for the Biden campaign. “Donald Trump is running a campaign of vengeance and revenge. revenge, self-preservation, and enriching his wealthy friends. President Biden to finish the job and continue his work to lower prescription drug prices, protect reproductive rights, and create good-paying jobs in a working economy for middle-class families is working
Some strategists from both parties have been surprised by Trump’s political endurance. Trump, twice impeached by the House of Representatives, has been indicted in four separate cases in federal and state courts since leaving office and recently lost a civil judgment against his business that cost him nearly half a billion dollars.
But his legal troubles made him more popular among Republican voters as he portrayed himself as a victim of judicial harassment. Republican challengers including Haley, two-time Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and others were decommissioned at GOP rallies around the two states. time candidate.
Trump entered Tuesday with a 276-to-43 lead over Haley, NBC News’ only delegate count to this summer’s Republican National Convention. With 865 delegates present — more than a third of the total going into the convention — Trump will fall short of the 1,215-delegate overnight majority. But she is expected to come close enough that many Republicans see Haley as an afterthought.
The Trump campaign, which is set to host a major fundraiser in Washington on Wednesday featuring GOP congressional leaders and headlined by Donald Trump Jr., has been pressing Republicans for weeks to close the primary.
“Republican voters scored a landslide victory for President Trump … and this race is over,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Carolyn Leavitt said. “Our focus is now on Joe Biden and the general election.”
The biggest delegate purses for both parties are in California and Texas, where Trump and Biden are expected to win easily. Biden still faces nominal opposition from Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who has yet to gain traction or any delegates in early states on the calendar. An NBC News tracker showed Biden walking away with 206 delegates on Tuesday.
It was Biden Michigan rejected two delegates last month. They won on the ballot line for “non-loyalists,” which progressive voters use to mark their displeasure with Israel’s support for the war in the Middle East.
Like his recent predecessors, including Trump, Biden sees the presidency as a hindrance to his popularity. A February Gallup poll found the approval rating at 38 percent. He has not been above 50 percent in a Gallup poll since June 2021.
Trump’s approval rating has fallen to 34 percent in his final month in the Oval Office, as he seeks to overturn the results of the 2020 election and has his supporters storming the Capitol to stop the confirmation of Biden’s victory. Trump’s approval was never above 49 percent in a Gallup poll.