Super Tuesday elections are being dominated by Biden and Trump, who are getting closer to a rematch in November

Super Tuesday saw President Joe Biden and his predecessor, Donald Trump, stomping to coast-to-coast victory. This effectively set up a rematch in November and increased pressure on the former president’s last significant opponent, Nikki Haley, to withdraw from the Republican campaign.

Texas, Alabama, Colorado, Maine, Oklahoma, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Minnesota, and Massachusetts had been won by both Biden and Trump. Additionally, Biden prevailed in Utah, Vermont, and Iowa’s Democratic primaries.

Haley prevailed in Vermont, but the former president also won areas like Maine and Virginia, which have sizable populations of moderate voters who have supported her in prior primaries.

Later this month, not enough states will have cast ballots for Trump or Biden to legally be declared the presumed candidates of their respective parties. However, a rematch seemed almost inevitable on the biggest day of the primary. Though their ages are being questioned and neither Biden, at 81, nor Trump, at 77, has widespread support from the people, they both still lead their parties.

The Democratic caucus in American Samoa, a small U.S. territory in the South Pacific Ocean, was the only event that either of them lost on Tuesday. Jason Palmer, a previously unidentified contender, beat Biden 51 votes to 40.

Haley, who has maintained that neither Biden nor Trump is old enough to serve as president again, was in her home state of South Carolina on election night, where she was watching the results. There are no planned events listed on her campaign website. Yet, her assistants said that there was a “jubilant” atmosphere during her watch party.

Meanwhile, a triumph celebration at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club was bustling with guests and served hors d’oeuvres including baked brie and empanadas. Staff members and supporters, such as rapper Forgiato Blow and former North Carolina Representative Madison Cawthorn, were there. As Fox News, which was being shown on screens across the ballroom, revealed that the former president had won North Carolina’s GOP primary, the audience roared.

A boisterous throng heard Trump say, “There’s a reason it’s called Super Tuesday.” He continued criticizing Biden on the border between the United States and Mexico and the US pullout from Afghanistan.

Instead of giving a speech, Biden released a statement praising his own achievements after defeating Trump and cautioning that Tuesday’s results had given Americans a clear option.

All of our progress is at jeopardy if Donald Trump wins back the presidency, Biden said. “He is driven by grievance and grift, focused on his own revenge and retribution, not the American people.”

There were significant races lower on the ticket, but the presidential election took up much of the attention. In North Carolina, where Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein will square off in a state that both parties are ferociously vying for before November, the campaign for governor took form.

Voters in California selected contenders to challenge Dianne Feinstein for the Senate seat she has held for a long time. Meanwhile, in a race that may be a predictor of the politics of crime, a progressive prosecutor in Los Angeles tried to stave off a fierce reelection challenge.

Polls indicate that the general public does not desire this year’s contest to be exactly like the 2020 contest, despite Biden and Trump’s dominance of their parties. According to a recent AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research study, the majority of Americans do not believe that Biden or Trump possess the mental clarity required for the position.

“I think they both failed to bring this country together,” Raleigh, North Carolina resident Brian Hadley, 66, said.

The last several days leading up to Tuesday illustrated how distinct this year’s campaign is. Instead of swarming the states hosting primaries, Biden and Trump staged competing rallies last week at the border between the United States and Mexico in an attempt to gain an edge in the escalating immigration dispute.

Trump used the 91 felony charges against Biden to accuse him of weaponizing the legal system after the Supreme Court decided 9-0 on Monday to let him to return to the primary ballots after efforts to bar him for his involvement in inciting the Capitol riot.

Trump said, “Fight your fight on your own.” “Avoid using judges and prosecutors to pursue your opponent.”

After giving the State of the Union speech on Thursday, Biden will campaign in Pennsylvania and Georgia, two significant swing states.

Nevertheless, the outgoing president has already defeated over a dozen formidable Republican opponents, leaving only Haley, his former ambassador to the United Nations, to fight him. She has continued to raise a lot of money, and this past weekend she won her first primary in Washington, D.C., a mostly Democratic city with a small number of Republicans registered. Haley had been “crowned queen of the swamp,” Trump mocked.

Haley said, “We can do better than two 80-year-old candidates for president,” at a rally on Monday in the suburbs of Houston.

Even while Trump’s wins are overwhelming, they have shown weaknesses with significant voting blocs, particularly in places with substantial independent voter concentrations and college towns like Hanover, New Hampshire, the location of Dartmouth College, or Ann Arbor, the home of the University of Michigan. This includes Minnesota, a state that Trump did not win in his otherwise resounding victory on Super Tuesday in 2016.

Seth De Penning, an independent with a leaning toward conservatism, said he voted for Haley on Tuesday morning in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, because he believed the GOP “needs a course correction.” De Penning, forty, described his decision as a conscience vote and said that he has never supported Trump due to reservations about his character and temperament.

Even so, Haley would need to get out of any Super Tuesday competition; a Trump sweep would just increase the pressure on her to withdraw.

In addition to his poor support rating, surveys indicate that a significant portion of Americans—including Democrats—do not want to see the 81-year-old run for office again. Last week’s comfortable victory in the Michigan primary for the president was somewhat marred by a “uncommitted” campaign run by activists who disagree with the way the president has handled Israel’s conflict in Gaza.

Similar protest votes are being promoted by supporters of the “uncommitted” vote in other states, such Minnesota. Muslims make up a significant portion of the state’s population, especially in the Somali American community.

Aliza Hoover, 29, of Massachusetts, said that she voted “no preference” because of moral disagreement to Joe Biden’s strategy toward Israel, but she added that this does not necessarily mean that she would vote that way in November.

“I believe that casting a vote with no preference at this time is a declaration to become a single-issue voter, and currently, the fact that my taxes are supporting a genocide does qualify me as a single-issue voter,” said Hoover.

Republicans take exception at any linguistic gaffes made by Biden, who is also the oldest president in history. His advisors believe that once it becomes certain that either Trump or Biden will win reelection in November, doubtful voters will change their minds. Trump is at the same age as Biden was when he ran for president in 2020, and his recent gaffes—like implying erroneously that he was challenging President Barack Obama, who resigned from office in 2017—have raised concerns about his own suitability.

“I hope to see the younger generation advance and assume leadership positions,” 71-year-old Democrat Susan Steele said after casting her Biden ballot in Portland, Maine on Tuesday.

Even fierce Trump fans are unmoved by these worries.

Ken Ballos, a retired police officer who saw a Trump rally over the weekend in Virginia, said, “Trump would eat him up,” and he added that Biden “would look like a fool up there.”