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Post by Webster on Mar 5, 2024 15:20:16 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Welcome and opening summary …Super Tuesday is usually one of the most hotly anticipated fixtures of the US electoral cycle, the point at which the race to be nominated for president usually has a big shake out as 16 states and one territory go to the polls or declare their results. It isn’t quite the same this year at all. For the Republicans, former president Donald Trump is so far ahead of his only rival, Nikki Haley, that the main focus is on whether she will even continue to campaign after tonight’s results come in, despite recently scoring her first primary victory in the District of Columbia. And for the incumbent president Joe Biden there are no serious challengers, but there is an opportunity to assess the extent to which Democratic party voters still have enthusiasm for the man they put into the White House to replace Trump just over three years ago.
Trump wins the North Dakota Republican caucusesDonald Trump has continued his domination of the race to be the Republican nominee for president with an expected victory in Monday’s North Dakota Republican caucuses. As his campaign headed into Super Tuesday the former president will most likely stretch his lead over Nikki Haley by all 29 of North Dakota’s delegates. If he wins at least 60% of the vote he gets all of the delegates. If his vote is less than 60%, then the delegates will be split proportional to the respective votes for Trump and Haley. North Dakota Gov Doug Burgum was quoted by AP as telling Republicans in a virtual address to caucusgoers: I think we’re going to send a message that is going to be a kick-off to tomorrow, which is president Donald Trump is going to close this out, this is going to be the end of the trail, and we’re going to say we have a nominee, and let’s go after it, and beat Joe Biden in the fall.Two other candidates were on the ballot besides Trump and Haley. The other candidates were Florida businessman David Stuckenberg and Texas businessman and pastor Ryan Binkley, who recently ended his campaign. The Democratic Party holds its North Dakota primary on 30 March.
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Post by Webster on Mar 5, 2024 15:24:01 GMT -5
Current delegate counts
Democratic Party
Joe Biden, 252 delegates
Uncommitted, 19 delegates
Dean Phillips, 11 delegates
Marianne Williamson, 4 delegates
Republican Party
Donald Trump, 223 delegates
Nikki Haley, 57 delegates
x-Ron DeSantis, 11 delegates
x-Vivek Ramaswamy, 3 delegates
Uncommitted, 1 delegate
note: x-winthdrawn
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Post by Webster on Mar 5, 2024 15:25:11 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Yesterday (the Guardian's) David Smith had a scene-setter for today, where he had spoken to Frank Luntz, a political consultant and pollster who had a long track record of advising Republican campaigns before Trump seized control of the party. Lunz told the Guardian: It never mattered less. I don’t know any political event that’s got more attention for being less relevant. The decision has been made. The choice is clear. You know who the two nominees are and 70% of Americans would rather it not be so.
The gap [in polling between Trump and Biden] is widening because Biden is collapsing. With the economy getting stronger and conditions on the ground getting better, Joe Biden is still getting weaker. That’s a three-alarm fire in America. The lights are flashing, the people are screaming but Joe Biden doesn’t hear them.
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Post by Webster on Mar 5, 2024 15:34:41 GMT -5
(The Guardian) What’s at stake for Joe Biden on Super Tuesday?Joe Biden does not have any real competition for the Democratic nomination, as both of his main opponents – Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips and self-help author Marianne Williamson – have failed to win any delegates so far, per the AP’s tracker. But Super Tuesday represents an opportunity for Biden to notch some decisive wins after his mixed performance in the Michigan primary last week. Biden won an impressive 81% of the vote in Michigan, but more than 100,000 of the state’s voters cast ballots for “uncommitted” after progressive organizers had urged Michiganders to do so as a means of protesting the war in Gaza. Many on the left have called on Biden to do more to bring about a ceasefire. In a statement issued last Tuesday after Michigan polls closed, Biden celebrated his win and notably did not include any specific mention of the “uncommitted” turnout, an omission that infuriated the progressive organizers of the campaign. “You’ve heard me say many times it’s never a good bet to bet against the United States of America,” Biden said in the statement. “This fight for our freedoms, for working families, and for Democracy is going to take all of us coming together. I know that we will.” Super Tuesday may give Biden the chance to show that the Democratic party is already coming together to defeat Trump in November.
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Post by Webster on Mar 5, 2024 15:35:41 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Will Super Tuesday mark the end of Nikki Haley's campaign?What are Nikki Haley’s prospects for today? Well, she has performed best in Democratic-leaning areas, as evidenced by her win in the Washington DC primary on Sunday, her first of the campaign. She has also benefited from independents and Democrats participating in Republican primaries, suggesting that her strongest performances could come in places with open primaries, which are not limited to participation by registered Republicans. Here’s what (Guardian correspondent) Joan E Greve had to say: Could this be Haley’s last stand? Most likely, yes. Even after losing to Trump by 20 points in her home state of South Carolina, Haley vowed to fight on to Super Tuesday, insisting that Republican voters deserved the opportunity to cast their ballots in the primary. “In the next 10 days, another 21 states and territories will speak,” Haley said after the South Carolina primary on 24 February. “They have the right to a real choice, not a Soviet-style election with only one candidate. And I have a duty to give them that choice.”But Haley has been vague on her plans after Super Tuesday, and many election watchers expect her to soon call it quits. With only one win in Washington DC under her belt, Haley will have a hard time justifying the continuation of her candidacy.
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Post by Webster on Mar 5, 2024 15:36:32 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Niall Stange at The Hill notes that in some ways, Nikki Haley’s win in Washington DC might prove a little counter-productive to her trying to attract Republican primary voters away from the lure of Donald Trump. It certainly gave the Trump campaign a new attack line against her. He wrote: Haley notched her first victory Sunday, when she carried the District of Columbia primary. That victory was history-making, as her campaign noted it made her the first woman ever to win a Republican presidential primary.
But the DC win does not change the shape of the race, nor is it a harbinger of things to come. The Republican electorate in the District is highly unrepresentative of the grassroots of the party across the nation. That point was seized upon by the Trump campaign. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Haley had been “crowned Queen of the Swamp by the lobbyists and DC insiders that want to protect the failed status quo.”
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Post by Webster on Mar 5, 2024 15:37:23 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Super Tuesday schedule-6pm EST (11pm GMT): Results expected in Iowa -7pm: Polls close in Vermont and Virginia. Caucuses convene in Alaska (Republicans only) -7:30pm: Polls close in North Carolina -8pm: Polls close in Alabama, Maine, Massachusetts, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Most polls close in Texas. -8:30pm: Polls close in Arkansas -9pm: Polls close in Colorado and Minnesota. Last polls close in Texas. Caucuses convene in Utah (Republicans only) -10pm: Polls close in Utah (Democrats only) -11pm: Polls close in California. Voting is expected to end in Utah (Republicans only) -Midnight: Voting ends in Alaska (Republicans only)
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Post by Webster on Mar 5, 2024 15:38:35 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Martin Pengelly in Washington offers this analysis of the key issues that will decide the 2024 US presidential election, among them is the economy: “It’s the economy, stupid.” So said the Democratic strategist James Carville, in 1992, as an adviser to Bill Clinton. Most Americans thought stewardship of the economy should change: Clinton beat an incumbent president, George HW Bush.
More than 30 years later, under Biden, the post-Covid recovery remains on track. Unemployment is low, stocks at all-time highs. That should bode well but the key question is whether enough Americans think the economy is strong under Biden, or think it is working for them, or think Trump was a safer pair of hands (forgetting the chaos of Covid). According to polling, many do prefer Trump. Cost-of-living concerns dominate such surveys. Inflation remains a worry. For Biden, Republican threats to social security and Medicare might help offset such worries. For Trump, whose base skews older, such threats must be downplayed – even though they are present in Republicans’ own transition planning.
Over at CNN, Ronald Brownstein has an analysis piece which looks a little at the potential weakness of Donald Trump support away from his core base. Brownstein writes: [Trump’s] performance so far reflects his success at transforming the Republican Party in his image. He’s reshaped the Republicans into a more blue-collar, populist and pugnacious party, focused more on his volatile blend of resentments against elites and cultural and racial change than the Ronald Reagan-era priorities of smaller government and active global leadership that former South Carolina Gov Nikki Haley has stressed.
But while the primaries have underscored Trump’s grip on the GOP, they have also demonstrated continued vulnerability for him in the areas where he has labored since he first announced his candidacy in 2015 – particularly among the white-collar suburban voters who mostly leaned toward the GOP before his emergence. The early 2024 nominating contests have shown that a substantial minority of Republican-leaning voters remain resistant to Trump’s vision.
Even while posting such convincing victories, he has struggled with college-educated voters and moderates. Trump has carried only about 40% of independent voters who participated in the three contests where exit or entrance polls of voters have been conducted.
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Post by Webster on Mar 5, 2024 15:50:17 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Here is another excerpt from Martin Pengelly’s analysis piece about the key issues at stake in this November’s presidential election, which today’s Super Tuesday results will all but confirm will be a re-run of Trump v Biden. -- Democrats are clear: they will focus on Republican attacks on abortion rights, from the Dobbs v Jackson supreme court ruling that struck down Roe v Wade to the mifepristone case, draconian bans in red states and candidates’ support for such bans.
For Democrats, it makes tactical sense: the threat to women’s reproductive rights is a rare issue on which the party polls very strongly and it has clearly fuelled a series of electoral wins, even in conservative states, since Dobbs. The recent Alabama IVF ruling, which said embryos should be legally treated as people, showed the potency of such tactics again: from Trump down, Republicans scrambled to deny they want to deny treatment used by millions to have the children they want.
Trump, however, clearly finds it hard not to boast about appointing three justices who voted to strike down Roe, and to entertain ideas about harsher abortion bans. Expect Biden and Democrats to hit and keep on hitting.
Joe Biden is reportedly eager, and pushing behind the scenes of his re-election campaign, for a “much more aggressive approach” to the 2024 contest for the White House that revolves around going “for Donald Trump’s jugular,” political news site Axios reports this morning. It’s a fascinating review of signals from the Biden camp and is based on a conviction from the US president that a great way to unsettle Trump, the Republican frontrunner to be his rival in November, is taunting him as “a loser”, the outlet says. As a famously thin-skinned former president, Trump is believed by Biden, according to what he has reportedly told friends, to be “wobbly, both intellectually and emotionally, and will explode if Biden mercilessly gigs and goads him — ‘go haywire in public’,” as one adviser put it to Axios. Apparently Biden is “looking for a fight” and his “instincts tell him to let it fly when warning about the consequences of Trump winning the presidency again. Biden told The New Yorker that Trump would refuse to admit losing, again, Axios reports.
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Post by Webster on Mar 5, 2024 19:05:12 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Turnout lags in Minnesota, early indications suggestTurnout has lagged in Minnesota’s primary compared to previous years, at least so far. About 88,000 people had returned early ballots as of Tuesday morning, out of 200,000 who had received them, the state’s secretary of state, Steve Simon, told reporters. Nationally, many states have seen lower turnout this presidential primary season as Trump and Biden have dominated the nominating contests, leaving voters feeling like their vote won’t play much of a role at this point. “There are at least a couple of factors that explain turnout,” Simon said. “One is candidates that inspire strong feelings, and the other is perceptions of competitiveness. I think it’s safe to say, I don’t think I’m breaking any new ground here, that we have a lot of number one, and not so much of number two.” But the lower turnout in the presidential primaries doesn’t tell us anything about what could happen in November’s general election. Presidential general elections bring the highest turnout of any US elections. “Over the last many years, there has been virtually no connection, virtually none, between early in the year primary turnout and general election turnout,” Simon said. Nationally, many states have seen lower turnout this presidential primary season as Trump and Biden have dominated the nominating contests, leaving voters feeling like their vote won’t play much of a role at this point. “There are at least a couple of factors that explain turnout,” Simon said. “One is candidates that inspire strong feelings, and the other is perceptions of competitiveness. I think it’s safe to say, I don’t think I’m breaking any new ground here, that we have a lot of number one, and not so much of number two.” But the lower turnout in the presidential primaries doesn’t tell us anything about what could happen in November’s general election. Presidential general elections bring the highest turnout of any US elections. “Over the last many years, there has been virtually no connection, virtually none, between early in the year primary turnout and general election turnout,” Simon said.
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Post by Webster on Mar 5, 2024 19:06:18 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Greetings from Donald Trump’s election watch party (or maybe that should be coronation), as the Republican frontrunner is expected to sweep the board on Super Tuesday. Media are gathering beneath the Corinthian-style columns, crystal chandeliers and gold leaf decor of the ballroom at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. Rows of gold chairs and some white cloth tables are arranged on the marble floor. Big TV screens proclaim: “Make America great again!” There are 13 American flags on stage behind a “Trump: Make America great again 2024” lectern. The mood is likely to be very different from the night here in November 2022 when Trump announced he was running for president again. On that occasion the mood was subdued after a disappointing showing by Republicans in the midterm elections. Trump’s victory in a Republican presidential primary against Florida governor Ron DeSantis looked far from assured. He came over as an ageing comic whose punchlines no longer land. Expect a different Trump tonight – triumphant, braggadocious, claiming vindication. It remains to be seen if we’ll get Trump the Magnanimous, congratulating Nikki Haley on a race well run, or Trump the Gloater, punching down at his opponent and full of petty gripes and grievances. Either way, the bejewelled crowd will lap it up.
The quickly organized push for a protest vote against Joe Biden over his handling of the Israel-Gaza war faces a test of its momentum this evening, with multiple Super Tuesday states having a ballot option to vote for nobody. The effort first ran in Michigan, where Democratic voters delivered more than 100,000 votes for “uncommitted” to send a message to the US president that they want a permanent ceasefire. Other states saw the results there and started working on the ground, standing up voter outreach to spread the word. Though there are a few Democrats running against Biden depending on the state, his strongest opposition yet this primary could come from the uncommitted campaign. Supporters want to keep the pressure on Biden via the ballot box to make him move on Gaza. Minnesota’s uncommitted campaign is seen as the most likely to bring in a good number of protest votes, given the state’s large Muslim community, high voter turnout and progressive history. Massachusetts and Colorado have also organized around the idea, so we’re keeping an eye on their numbers in Tuesday’s results. Other Super Tuesday states have a version of uncommitted as well: Alabama, Iowa, North Carolina and Tennessee. Organizers in Minnesota went to mosques to let people know of the uncommitted option and ran an ad in the state’s largest newspaper, all while working the phones and social media to share the idea. After Super Tuesday, the movement’s next big bet is Washington state, where already the state’s largest labor union endorsed uncommitted. Washington votes on 12 March.
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Post by Webster on Mar 5, 2024 19:07:28 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Joe Biden wins Iowa Democratic caucusJoe Biden has won Iowa’s Democratic caucus, the Associated Press reports. The president has triumphed in every state that has voted so far in the Democratic nomination process, as incumbent presidents typically do. For Republicans, Iowa was the first state to vote, with Donald Trump sweeping their caucuses held in January.
Joe Biden won overwhelmingly in Iowa, with 11,083 votes, according to unofficial results from the state Democratic party. Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips was his closest runner-up, with 362 votes, followed by author Marianne Williamson, who received 268. “Uncommitted”, the category favored by protest groups unhappy with Biden’s policy towards Israel’s invasion of Gaza, received 480 votes. Iowa’s Democrats in previous years held their caucuses on the same date as the Republicans, but this year, conducted the election by mail.
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Post by Webster on Mar 5, 2024 19:08:27 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Poll closing times-Alabama: 7pm local, 8pm ET -Alaska: 8pm local, 12am ET -Arkansas: 7.30pm local, 8.30pm ET -California: 8pm local, 11pm ET -Colorado: 7pm local, 9pm ET -Maine: 8pm local -Massachusetts: 8pm local -Minnesota: 8pm local, 9pm ET -North Carolina: 7.30pm local -Oklahoma: 7pm local, 8pm ET -Tennessee: 7pm local, 8pm ET -Texas: 7pm local, 8pm ET, except in the state’s far west, which is on mountain time, and where polls will close at 9pm ET -Utah: 9pm local, 11pm ET -Vermont: 7pm ET -Virginia: 7pm ET
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Post by Webster on Mar 5, 2024 19:27:21 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Joe Biden wins Virginia primaryThe AP called the race 9 minutes after polls closed. We’re still watching for results in the Republican primary. Today’s election is just for the presidential primaries. The state primary, for state and congressional offices, will be held on June 18.
Virginia generally tends to back the Democrat in presidential elections. There’s no real “uncommitted” option in this state, so Democrats wishing to protest Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza are either voting for Marianne Williamson, or forgoing a vote altogether.
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Post by Webster on Mar 5, 2024 19:28:35 GMT -5
(The Guardian) Joe Biden wins VermontThe AP called the race 20 minutes after polls closed.
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