Don’t expect any major upsets in the relatively uneventful presidential primaries on Super Tuesday, when 15 states plus one U.S. territory will hand out delegates to each major party’s presidential nominees. The real action will be farther down the ballot.
President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump will continue their steady marches toward their party’s nominations when states including Alabama, Colorado, California, North Carolina, Utah and Vermont head to the polls. (Also in the mix: American Samoa, the one territory that Michael Bloomberg managed to win during the former New York mayor’s doomed 2020 quest for the Democratic presidential nomination.)
Biden faces only nominal opposition from Rep. Dean Phillips, whose home state of Minnesota votes today. Biden’s so far won all 206 Democratic delegates up for grabs.
Trump, meanwhile, still faces a challenge from former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley. Trump has amassed 244 delegates to Haley’s 43, nearly half of which she won in last weekend’s GOP primary in Washington, D.C.
But though Trump is expected to collect the roughly 1,200 delegates he needs to clinch the Republican nomination before the end of the month, Haley might do unexpectedly well in states like Vermont and Utah that have either open primaries where Democrats can vote for her or more moderate GOP bases that may reject Trump.
Haley might need only a few victories to prolong Trump’s pursuit of the nomination, precious days and weeks putting him and the Republican National Committee further behind Biden and the Democratic National Committee in fundraising.
Haley has only committed to staying in the race through Super Tuesday, so it’s not entirely out of the question the former South Carolina governor might suspend her campaign following Tuesday’s elections, at which point it’s not clear whether she might walk back her attacks on the former president and endorse him.
The make-or-break races, however, will be in critical…
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