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Guests have been gathering at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach, Florida to watch the results come in.
Trump has addressed the crowd and gone to mingle after what he called “a long night”. You can watch his speech below.
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of Super Tuesday, one of the biggest days of the 2024 election calendar where voters in 15 states and one US territory will cast ballots to determine who they want as their presidential candidate.
It’s also a day when the largest share of delegates – which candidates need to secure the nomination – are up for grabs.
For Republicans, it could further solidify Donald Trump’s dominance of his party and spell the end of Nikki Haley’s longshot bid to win the nomination.
While Trump cannot win enough delegates to formally clinch the nomination today, another dominant performance would further pressure his remaining rival. The day’s contests will award more than one-third of Republican delegates – and more than 70 per cent of the number needed to secure the nomination.
The first polls will close at 7pm EST (11am AEDT) in Vermont and Virginia, with results to come through very shortly after that.
Raleigh: Donald Trump and Joe Biden are all but guaranteed to win their party’s presidential nominations after dominating the Super Tuesday election contests, setting up a historic rematch most Americans say they don’t want.
After the biggest day of the 2024 primary season, Nikki Haley, Trump’s only remaining rival for the Republican ticket, is under pressure to drop out, having failed to win enough states or delegates to slow the former president’s march to the White House.
Fifteen states and one territory voted on Super Tuesday, a critical day in the election cycle when more than a third of state delegates – whose votes are needed for a candidate to win the nomination – were up for grabs.
In the Democratic contest, where Biden does not have a serious challenger, the president won every state where he was on the ballot. The only blow he suffered was in the territory of American Samoa, where a little-known businessman, Jason Palmer, beat him.
What has been obvious for weeks is now beyond reasonable dispute: Biden and Trump are the overwhelming favourites to face each other in November.
They could not be more different in outlook but they seemed to be mirror images of each other during the primary season.
Trump wanted a coronation, but Haley made him fight at least somewhat to win the nomination. She’s held onto a stubborn chunk of voters, a possible indication that part of the GOP isn’t as enthusiastic about Trump as expected.
Biden, on the other hand, faces a lack of Democratic enthusiasm on paper, but not in the primary. Polls show problems for him among some of his party’s core demographics, including younger and black voters. But Biden, who hasn’t faced any significant challengers, has won his primaries by huge margins.
It may be that one or both of these two politicians is more hobbled than it appears – but nonetheless they are the only options.
AP
Republican Nikki Haley has suffered a string of significant losses that prompted allies to believe that the end of her 2024 presidential campaign may be near.
She did not make any public statements as officials counted ballots coast to coast late into the night. Privately, Haley’s team expected Republican rival Donald Trump to win almost every one of the so-called “Super Tuesday” contests despite their best efforts to stop him.
Haley logged her only victory so far in Vermont.
She spent the night huddled with staff watching returns near her South Carolina home.
Biden’s age has been a consistent theme ahead of Super Tuesday. At 81, the president is oldest person in history to occupy the Oval Office and his mental acuity is often questioned.
Trump, meanwhile, is 77 and has also had his share of gaffes, such as confusing former speaker Nancy Pelosi with Nikki Haley, or mixing up Barack Obama with Biden.
Asked if the candidates should be running for another term, Duke university student Noah Vaughan says: “I hate the rhetoric on age because it is not binary.”
In relation to Biden, the 24-year-old Democrat adds: “Age brings a lot of perspective. I think we look at Biden and we should look at an individual who is a very tangible politician, who has lived through dozens and dozens of national and international tragedies, and has a real perspective on how can we go forward into the future.“
“He said that on The Tonight Show a few weeks ago: my body is old, but my ideas are not. Biden knows he’s old. Trump doesn’t acknowledge it. To our generation, he’s just lying to our face.”
Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley has scored a surprise victory on Super Tuesday, upsetting Donald Trump to win Vermont.
Haley is the last major rival to Trump standing in a once-crowded primary field. She has increasingly stepped up her attacks on the former president, arguing that he will lose in November to President Joe Biden if he clinches the party’s nomination.
Her victory in Vermont will do little to dent Trump’s primary dominance, however. It was by far her best result, and she was essentially tied with Trump in early results before nudging ahead. But the former president carried other states that might have been favourable to Haley such as Virginia and Maine, which have large swaths of moderate voters like those who have backed her in previous primaries.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden picked up another Democratic primary win in Utah, while both Biden and Donald Trump took out their respective races in California.
AP
US President Joe Biden has made a statement after taking out a string of Democratic primaries across the country.
Tonight’s results leave the American people with a clear choice: are we going to keep moving forward or will we allow Donald Trump to drag us backwards into the chaos, division, and darkness that defined his term in office?
Four years ago, I ran because of the existential threat Donald Trump posed to the America we all believe in. Since then, we’ve made enormous progress: 15 million jobs, wages rising faster than inflation, taking on Big Pharma and the gun lobby – and winning. But we have more to do.
If Donald Trump returns to the White House, all of this progress is at risk. He is driven by grievance and grift, focused on his own revenge and retribution, not the American people. He is determined to destroy our democracy, rip away fundamental freedoms like the ability for women to make their own health care decisions, and pass another round of billions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy – and he’ll do or say anything to put himself in power.
Today, millions of voters across the country made their voices heard – showing that they are ready to fight back against Donald Trump’s extreme plan to take us backwards.
My message to the country is this: Every generation of Americans will face a moment when it has to defend democracy. Stand up for our personal freedom. Stand up for the right to vote and our civil rights. To every Democrat, Republican, and independent who believes in a free and fair America: This is our moment. This is our fight. Together, we will win.
Guests have been gathering at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach, Florida to watch the results come in.
Trump has addressed the crowd and gone to mingle after what he called “a long night”. You can watch his speech below.
We spoke too soon about Joe Biden having had an uneventful Super Tuesday - the president has just lost the Democratic primary in the tiny US territory of American Samoa.
Baltimore-based investor Jason Palmer has just defeated Biden in the South Pacific territory.
According to the local Democratic Party, Palmer won 51 votes and Biden won 40. There were only six delegates up for grabs there in a contest that requires nearly 2000, but it’s still a notable setback for an incumbent president.
This isn’t the first time that American Samoa has turned up surprising results in a primary. During the 2020 Democratic race, it was the only contest won by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor.
with AP
Donald Trump met with Tesla chief executive Elon Musk, one of the world’s richest individuals, in Florida over the weekend as the former Republican president seeks a major cash infusion for his latest re-election campaign, The New York Times is reporting.
The Times cited three people briefed on Sunday’s private meeting in Palm Beach but who spoke to the newspaper on condition of anonymity.
According to the Times, Trump met with Musk and a few wealthy Republican donors on Sunday and hopes to have a one-on-one discussion soon with Musk, the chief executive of both Tesla Inc and SpaceX, and the owner-executive chairman of X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
Neither Musk nor Trump’s campaign immediately responded to requests for comment.
Brenda Chadwick is a former tech worker who used to live in California. She says she likes Biden, but is not convinced that Democrats will win in November “and that’s a real worry”.
In order to beat Trump, she says, the party needs to do more to sell its achievements, and must also be more strategic and aggressive against the Republicans.
“We’ve gotta get a little more loud,” she says.
Her friend, Marcia Perry, worries about how divided her country has become. She believes it started when Obama was elected in 2008, “because that was a bridge too far for a lot of people.