Super Tuesday Preview: Nominations In Sight

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The proverbial Big Kahuna of presidential politics is finally here. Everything that’s happened so far in the 2024 presidential primary campaigns — the glitzy announcements, the greasy spoon diner visits, the debates, the town hall gatherings, the multiple early-state partisan races — has been building up to this moment.

Super Tuesday, the largest single day of voting in the primary season – and the second biggest day of voting overall – is now upon us.

Just how big is it? Voters in fifteen states (and one territory) are going to the polls today. For Republicans, 874 delegates will be allocated. That’s about 36 percent of the available total and a sizable chunk of the 1,215 delegates necessary to secure the GOP presidential nomination.

On the Democratic side, the delegate kitty is even bigger, with 1,439 on the line. Likewise, that’s 36 percent of the 3,979 total delegates available to Democratic presidential aspirants.

For those of you keeping score at home, here are the thirteen states hosting GOP primary elections today:

• Alabama
• Arkansas
• California
• Colorado
• Maine 
• Massachusetts
• Minnesota
• North Carolina
• Oklahoma
• Tennessee
• Texas 
• Vermont
• Virginia

And here are the two states hosting GOP caucuses:

• Alaska
• Utah

On the Democratic side, here are the fourteen states (and one territory) hosting primary elections:

• Alabama
• American Samoa
• Arkansas
• California
• Colorado
• Maine
• Massachusetts
• Minnesota
• North Carolina
• Oklahoma
• Tennessee
• Texas
• Utah
• Vermont
• Virginia

In both partisan primaries, the frontrunners (a.k.a. presumptive nominees) are poised to put their respective races out of reach. Former president Donald Trump and Joe Biden are both prohibitive favorites to win big on Tuesday. And unless either is abducted by aliens – or tethered to a Chinese spy balloon – securing their party’s nominations should easily be within arm’s reach come Wednesday.

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“SUPER TUESDAY, a really big deal,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “Please get out and VOTE!”

Trump rolled into the big day of voting with favorable winds filling his sails. Fresh off of his huge victory in last Tuesday’s Michigan primary, he followed it up with big wins in the Idaho and Missouri. Then came Monday, when the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Colorado’s Supreme Court had erred in booting Trump from that state’s primary ballot. That move was so far in the legal weeds even liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Kentaji Brown Jackson sided with the high court’s conservative majority.

Maine’s secretary of state and a state judge in Illinois have likewise decreed Trump’s name cannot appear on ballots there, either – moves which also appear likely to be struck down.

Like Trump, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley headed into Tuesday’s voting with a spring in her step. After months of losing, Haley decisively won Sunday’s District of Columbia primary, scooping up all 19 of its delegates. Not only was this the first win of Haley’s campaign, it was also the first time in history a woman ever won a Republican presidential primary.

Haley insists she’ll stay in the race until July’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee … but was her big moment also her last hurrah?

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Trump’s former UN ambassador insists she’s not waging an anti-Trump campaign, but the anti-Trump vote has clearly coalesced around her. She has at times attracted around 40 percent of the GOP vote – but that’s not enough to win the nomination. Her campaign is coming down to a Hail Mary long shot, a pipe dream based on the hope that something will happen to make droves of Trump delegates have a last-minute change of heart.

Although she recently tamped down talk suggesting she might be interested in running on a Republican-Democratic fusion ticket via the No Labels party, speculation still abounds she’s keeping the door open to the prospect of carrying on as an independent. In fact, a big report published Monday in The Hill focused on Haley’s viability in a general election.

While Haley insisted in that article “it’s not about me – it’s about the direction I think the country should go” her recent decision to renege on her prior pledge to support the party’s eventual nominee is telling.

What will Haley eventually do? The answer probably depends on what shape her campaign finds itself in come Wednesday morning.

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Finally, there’s Joe Biden. His threat doesn’t come from Democratic challengers. Neither retiring Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips nor self-help guru Marianne Williamson (who un-suspended her presidential campaign last week after Biden took it on the chin in Michigan) have posed problems.

Biden has shooed them away like flies at a picnic, more annoying than problematic.

Biden’s challenges don’t appear on any ballot. Rather, he is confronted by his advanced age (82) and his increasingly concerning cognitive decline – coupled with a lackluster economy beset by stubborn inflation, his insistence on imposing a radical climate change-driven agenda that has limited public appeal beyond the left wing of his party, and a woke/progressive base that is increasingly antagonistic not only to his administration but also toward him personally.

We saw that woke base revolt in Michigan, where 13.2 percent of Democrats voted “uncommitted” over him.

Biden must overcome all those obstacles by first convincing Democrats to keep the faith by keeping him in the White House. Should Biden emerge from Super Tuesday showing any sign of electoral weakness, the political jackals (California Gov. Gavin Newsom foremost among them) appear prepared to pounce. 

And so while the electoral outcomes may be preordained, the margins matter. And on those margins, all three candidates on the ballot share one common denominator: They have a lot riding on Super Tuesday’s outcome.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …

J. Mark Powell is an award-winning former TV journalist, government communications veteran, and a political consultant. He is also an author and an avid Civil War enthusiast. Got a tip or a story idea for Mark? Email him at mark@fitsnews.com.

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