Donald Trump is poised to continue his march to the GOP presidential nomination on Tuesday, when 15 states will vote to award more than a third of the party\u2019s delegates and test how quickly Republicans are coalescing behind the former president.<\/p>\n
Trump has decisively won all but one contest so far and is expected to make a clean sweep of \u201cSuper Tuesday,\u201d a normally high-stakes moment in the primary calendar that the former president\u2019s dominance has stripped of its suspense. But despite Trump\u2019s near-incumbent status in the race, a significant, if losing, percentage of voters has opted for another candidate in several contests \u2014 underscoring some voters\u2019 reservations and the potential general election challenges ahead. His last standing GOP challenger, Nikki Haley, has pointed to this trend as she has made a case for continuing her campaign. <\/p>\n
In many ways, a rematch between President Biden and Trump is effectively underway, and observers and strategists expressed mixed views of what the margins in the GOP contests portend for Trump in November. The incumbent and his allies are ramping up criticism of Trump as a threat to democracy, abortion rights and other freedoms, while the ex-president has hammered Biden over immigration and the economy. Trump\u2019s 91 criminal charges, which he has used as rallying cry in the primary, are also expected to factor into the fall campaign.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s team expects to lock down the nomination by March 19, advisers said. Haley, the former U.N. ambassador, has only committed to staying in the race through Tuesday, setting the stage for a potentially quick exit.<\/p>\n
Recent polling shows that more than 90 percent of registered Republicans back Trump over Biden, who is struggling with low enthusiasm on the Democratic side and cracks in the coalition that delivered him a narrow victory in 2020.<\/p>\n
At the same time, the primaries have demonstrated Haley\u2019s appeal to independents and college-educated voters as she lays out a forceful argument against Trump. Super Tuesday will provide more snapshots of who is in Trump\u2019s camp and who may need persuading in the months ahead.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe next chapter of this race will be about how Trump treats Nikki Haley and her supporters,\u201d said veteran Republican strategist Scott Reed. \u201cHe\u2019s on track to be able to unite the party,\u201d Reed added, \u201cbut he has to treat the Haley voters with respect.\u201d<\/p>\n
The biggest prize up for grabs on Tuesday is California, where Trump has a good shot to take home all 169 delegates by winning more than 50 percent of the vote. The delegates formalize the pick by voting for their candidate at the Republican National Convention in July.<\/p>\n
California Republicans used to award delegates to the victor of each congressional district, but Trump allies successfully pushed last year to adopt new rules they believed would help Trump quickly amass the 1,215 delegates he needs nationally to secure the nomination. Many Super Tuesday states have winner-take-all provisions, but the details vary.<\/p>\n
The states that vote on Tuesday account for some 874 delegates and will test Trump and Haley\u2019s strengths across very different electorates \u2014 from red stronghold Texas to battleground North Carolina to solid-blue Massachusetts, where the Republican population is more moderate. Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia and the territory of American Samoa will also vote. On Monday, North Dakota will hold its Republican caucuses.<\/p>\n
The Trump team says he could win the nomination as early as March 12 and will get there by March 19 even under their most generous modeling for Haley, which is based on her best showing so far, in New Hampshire. On Saturday, Trump swept GOP caucuses in Michigan, Missouri and Idaho.<\/p>\n
\u201cRepublican voters have delivered resounding wins for President Trump in every single primary contest and this race is over,\u201d said campaign spokesman Steven Cheung. \u201cOur focus is now on Joe Biden and the general election.\u201d<\/p>\n
Holding a rally on Saturday in Raleigh, N.C., before blitzing Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine, Haley continued her sharp criticism of Trump before an enthusiastic crowd. She said his comments about Russia showed he was \u201cwilling to side with a thug\u201d and lamented that it\u2019s \u201cnot normal\u201d to call opponents \u201cvermin,\u201d as Trump has.<\/p>\n
Trump directed most of his fire on Biden at his own North Carolina rally this weekend and focused on the southern border, which attendees repeatedly named as their top concern. He was not done with Haley, however, declaring her \u201cbad news\u201d and \u201cvery average.\u201d<\/p>\n
One attendee, 67-year-old John Wayne Lambeth from Winston-Salem, said Haley should drop out and tell her followers, \u201cI am behind Trump 100 percent.\u201d Another, 64-year-old Ben Hamilton from Lexington, suggested Haley was trying to \u201cbe a spoiler.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Hamilton also said he wanted to hear how Trump would \u201cjoin the Republicans together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Haley has stayed in the race as a vessel for dissatisfaction with a Trump-Biden matchup, arguing that more voters deserve an opportunity to support a GOP alternative. She won 43 percent of the vote in New Hampshire and 40 percent in her home state of South Carolina, and pointed to those performances as evidence of broad hesitations about Trump, even as he leads with almost every demographic in the GOP.<\/p>\n
In South Carolina, where Haley served as governor, she had the strongest support in more urban, educated and affluent areas, though Trump still led in the suburbs. In statewide exit polls, she led by nearly 10 points with college graduates and 25 points with independents. Her team has argued that Super Tuesday states with similarly open primaries \u2014 where non-Republicans can vote \u2014 offer more favorable terrain.<\/p>\n
Haley\u2019s coalition, which draws heavily on independents, does not indicate a large swath of Republicans will oppose Trump in November, said Charles Franklin, who runs Marquette Law School\u2019s polls of the 2024 race. The latest national Marquette survey, released in February, found that 7 percent of registered Republicans would vote for Biden over Trump if they had to pick between those options \u2014 slightly less than the 9 percent of registered Democrats who would choose Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s dominant in the party but there are minority views in the party as well that have kept Haley in the mix,\u201d Franklin said.<\/p>\n
Trump posted a wider lead over Haley last week in Michigan, where he won 68 percent to Haley\u2019s 27 percent. That suggests that his advantage in the primaries may grow as the race nationalizes and moves to places where Haley did not campaign intensely, some political observers said.<\/p>\n
Independent pollster Richard Czuba took note, however, that Haley garnered a third of the vote in places like Oakland County and Kent County. \u201cThat\u2019s where Donald Trump lost the election in 2020 in Michigan,\u201d he said, \u201cbecause those suburban voters came out in droves in a way they didn\u2019t in 2016.\u201d<\/p>\n
How Haley voters there might vote in November is hard to say, he said. For some, \u201cwe don\u2019t know where they\u2019re going to go because they don\u2019t know where they\u2019re going to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, many Republicans dismissed the Haley team\u2019s argument that primary results are a \u201cflashing warning sign for Trump in November.\u201d<\/p>\n
Constantin Querard, a GOP consultant in battleground Arizona, once traveled the state gathering signatures urging Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to run for president, believing he would be strongest at the top of the ticket and lift his down-ballot clients. But he said he doesn\u2019t see votes for Haley as a red flag and pointed to recent general election polls of the swing states.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrump\u2019s winning,\u201d he said simply. Other surveys have had Biden leading but consistently show a close race.<\/p>\n
In the GOP race, Haley faces rising pressure to step aside. Trump warned after his New Hampshire victory that anyone who donated further to his rival would be \u201cpermanently barred from the MAGA camp.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump has a long history of abruptly ending his feuds with opponents who change their tune to praise him; he declared his mocking nickname for DeSantis \u201cretired\u201d the day that DeSantis dropped out of the 2024 race and endorsed him. When DeSantis criticized the former president in a February call with supporters, however, the Trump team quickly punched back.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not clear how Haley will approach Trump in the long term. Asked on Friday if she would keep criticizing the GOP\u2019s direction under Trump even if she drops out, Haley said, \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d On \u201cMeet the Press\u201d Sunday, Haley said she no longer felt bound by a pledge to support the eventual nominee, which the RNC required of all debate participants last year.<\/p>\n
George Andrews, a GOP consultant in California, argued Haley can wield influence even in defeat. \u201cBernie Sanders lost in 2020, but his influence on Joe Biden\u2019s policy \u2014 holy cow,\u201d said Andrews, who worked for a pro-DeSantis super PAC and has now volunteered as a delegate for Haley in California.<\/p>\n
Saul Anuzis, a former chair of the Michigan GOP, said Trump would be smart to be magnanimous toward his critics but added, \u201cTrump is gonna be Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scott Clement and Dylan Wells contributed to this report. LeVine reported from Greensboro, N.C.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Donald Trump is poised to continue his march to the GOP presidential nomination on Tuesday, when 15 states will vote to award more than a third of the party\u2019s delegates and test how quickly Republicans are coalescing behind the former president. Trump has decisively won all but one contest so far and is expected to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1728,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}