Biden, Trump sweep Super Tuesday primaries
After Super Tuesday’s election results, Trump, 77, is hoping to establish a commanding lead in the delegate count and vanquish his only Republican opponent, Haley
PTI
Washington, 6 March
US President Joe Biden from the
Democratic Party and his Republican predecessor Donald Trump have swept in
their parties' presidential nomination primaries held in 15 states across the
country, paving the way for a rematch between them in November and putting
pressure on Indian-American candidate Nikki Haley to quit.
After Super Tuesday’s election
results, Trump, 77, is hoping to establish a commanding lead in the delegate
count and vanquish his only Republican opponent, Haley. Seeking his
re-election, Biden, 81, swept almost all the Democratic primary states. He lost
to Jason Palmer in American Samoa.
“Joe Biden isn’t facing any major
competition in the primary cycle, and has won all the Democratic contests so
far tonight, CNN projects, as he gears up for a likely rematch with Trump in
November,” CNN said. Haley, 52, the former US envoy to the UN failed to make a
mark Tuesday even as she showed strong support in the states of Vermont, where
she won. That victory, however, will do little to dent Trump's primary
dominance.
Trump prevailed in most of the Super
Tuesday states: California, Texas, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama,
Virginia, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Massachusetts, Utah, Minnesota, Colorado,
Arkansas and Maine.
Super Tuesday is an important phase
of presidential primaries when the early contests are over, and voters from
multiple states cast ballots in primaries timed to occur on the same date.
Almost all the results were one-sided in favour of Trump except for Vermont,
where the winning difference was about one per cent.
More than a third of all the
Republican delegates were at stake on Super Tuesday, the biggest haul of any
date on the primary calendar. To win the presidential nomination of the
Republican party, either of the two candidates needs 1,215 delegates, who are
elected during the primaries. Before Super Tuesday, Trump had 244 delegates in
his kitty, while Haley had 43.
Speaking from Palm Beach, Florida,
Trump claimed that "we have a very divided country," and vowed to
unify it soon. “This was an amazing night and an amazing day, it’s been an
incredible period of time in our country’s history,” Trump said at his election
night watch party at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach. "We have a very
divided country. We have a country [where] a political person uses
weaponisation against his political opponents," he said.
He compared the state of the US
political system to "third-world countries". "Never happened
here. It happens in other countries, but they're third-world countries. And in
some ways, we're a third-world country."
Talking up some of his achievements
from his time in office, notably the half-built border wall between the US and
Mexico, Trump claimed he delivered "the safest borders in the history of
our country" and went on to rail against what he described as
"migrant crime", without citing any evidence. "And so the world
is laughing at us, the world is taking advantage of us," he said.
He goes on to describe his aims to
make the US "energy independent and energy dominant". "All the …
tragedy, you will not have to think of it. All of the problems we have today,
we would not have had any of them," he said. "You would only have
success and that is what ultimately going to unify this country and unify this
party," he added.
Earlier, Biden touted the work his
administration has accomplished in its first term in office while issuing a
stark warning that a second Trump term would mean a return to "chaos,
division, and darkness." "Four years ago, I ran because of the
existential threat Donald Trump posed to the America we all believe in,"
Biden wrote in a statement, highlighting progress under his administration on
jobs, inflation, prescription drug prices, and gun control.
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