Former President Donald Trump heads into Super Tuesday tomorrow with 247 delegates in GOP primaries, having swept Nikki Haley in Saturday’s triple-header that featured the Idaho, Missouri, and Michigan caucuses.
Trump lost Washington, D.C., on Sunday, but that just means Haley is “Queen of the Swamp,” the Trump campaign said.
Haley now has 43 delegates, and D.C is the only contest she has won outright.
More good news for Trump came in the RealClearPolitics (RCP) average of polls, which puts Trump ahead of President Joe Biden, but not as far ahead of Biden as Haley is.
Saturday, Sunday Breakdown
Trump’s delegate total from Saturday was 125: 54 in Missouri, 39 in Michigan, and 32 in Idaho. Adding in the 12 from his victory in last week’s Michigan primary, the state’s caucuses gave Trump 51 of its 55 delegates.
In Missouri, Trump won 100 percent of the 924 votes cast.
In Michigan, he won 1,575 of the 1,611 votes cast, or 97.8 percent. Haley won just 36 votes.
In Idaho, Trump was similarly dominant, with 33,603 votes to Haley’s 5,221. That’s 84.9 percent.
As expected, Haley defeated Trump in Washington, D.C., but not by a similar margin.
To win the district’s 19 delegates, Haley took 1,279 votes to Trump’s 676, a 62.9 to 33.2 percent margin. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who dropped out of the race to support Trump, received 38 votes.
Haley’s win in the nation’s capital invited this inspired remark from Trump spokesman Karoline Leavitt:
While Nikki has been soundly rejected throughout the rest of America, she was just crowned Queen of the Swamp by the lobbyists and DC insiders that want to protect the failed status quo. The swamp has claimed their queen.
With a day to go before voters in 15 states go to the polls, Haley is a country mile behind Trump in the RealClearPolitics average GOP primary polls.
Data through February 28 put Trump at 78.7 percent against Haley’s 15.3, an insurmountable 63.4-point lead.
Trump has prevailed in every contest for delegates except Washington, D.C.’s.
If this were a boxing match, the referee would stop the fight.
Super Tuesday
North Dakota offers 29 delegates in today’s primary.
Tomorrow’s contests offer Trump the chance to win 865 delegates, but even winning them all plus North Dakota wouldn’t give him the nomination. With 1,141 delegates, he would be 74 short of the 1,215 needed to win.
The states and their delegates:
- Alaska — 29
- Alabama — 50
- Arkansas — 40
- California — 169
- Colorado — 37
- Massachusetts — 40
- Maine — 20
- Minnesota — 39
- North Carolina — 74
- Oklahoma — 43
- Tennessee — 58
- Texas — 161
- Utah — 40
- Virginia — 48
- Vermont — 17
Then again, Trump could easily lock up the nomination by the end of March, as 585 delegates will be awarded by the end of the month. The two big days are March 12, when voters in four states cast ballots to award 161 delegates, and March 19, when voters in five states go to the polls to award 350.
Trump v. Biden, Haley v. Biden
As the election on November 5 goes, both GOP candidates lead Biden.
Haley is ahead of Biden by 5.1 points, 45.4-40.3
Trump leads Biden 47.8 to 45.5, or 2.3 points.
As Biden goes, his approval rating is abysmal: 56.5 percent of those polled, RCP reports, disapprove of Biden’s performance as president as of February 28. Just 40.5 percent approve, leaving a baleful 16 percent gap.
Data like those keep Haley’s publicity machine pumping out statements such as one published Saturday saying that voters in Utah have “a chance to help save America.”
“A stunning 70% of Americans don’t want [sic] neither Trump nor Biden to be president,” Haley wrote at her website:
We know what they’ll do. But we also realize who they are. Most Americans know that Trump and Biden are too old. They stumble over words and forget world leaders. That’s not who you want in the Oval Office when Russia launches a nuclear weapon at our satellites or China shuts down our electricity grid.
The presidency is the most demanding job in human history. You don’t give it to someone who’s at risk of dementia. You give it to someone who’s disciplined — who can work day and night for eight years straight. You give it to someone who’s fighting for America, not themselves.
The claim that Trump and Biden are too old to be president has been Haley’s constant refrain, a not-unreasonable approach given that Biden, 81, already has dementia, and Trump will be 78 on June 14. If elected, Trump will be the same age Biden was when he was the oldest president ever to be inaugurated on January 20, 2021.
Trump was the oldest president ever inaugurated when he took office four years earlier.
