Former President Donald Trump had a strong showing on Super Tuesday in the GOP primaries, sweeping 14 out of 15 states, significantly boosting the ex-president’s delegate total as he approaches the threshold needed to secure the Republican nomination—but not yet putting him over the top.
Former President Donald Trump arrives for an election-night watch party at Mar-a-Lago on March 5 in ... [+]
More than 850 delegates were up for grabs on Super Tuesday, when voters went to the polls in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia.
Trump is the projected winner in every state except Vermont, where former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley scored an upset, and he needs 1,215 delegates in order to clinch the nomination.
As of 5:30 a.m. Eastern time, Trump has 995 delegates, according to trackers from The New York Times and Associated Press, with approximately 86 still unallocated as the remaining votes are counted (plus 11 in Texas that will not be allocated until the state’s convention in May).
Even netting all the remaining unallocated delegates wouldn’t be enough to put Trump over the 1,215 needed.
The next election will be in American Samoa on March 8—whose nine delegates won’t be enough to put Trump over the top—but depending on how many remaining delegates he gets in Super Tuesday and how the races go, he could hit 1,215 on March 12, when 161 delegates are up for grabs in Georgia, Hawaii, Mississippi and Washington.
If he doesn’t manage to grab the nomination then, he’s all but certain to clinch it when 350 delegates are at stake on March 19—including 125 in Trump’s adopted home state of Florida, where the winner will get all the state’s delegates.
- That’s how many delegates Trump had going into Super Tuesday, while Haley had 43.
President Joe Biden doesn’t have enough delegates to formally clinch the Democratic nomination yet either, winning 1,497 as of 5:00 a.m. Eastern time Tuesday according to the AP—still shy of the 1,968 he needs. Biden is similarly expected to secure the nomination in the coming weeks as the president does not face any serious challengers, though little-known candidate Jason Palmer did manage to beat out the president in American Samoa Tuesday.
Whether Haley will stay in the race, and for how long. The former governor did not speak on Tuesday night and the AP notes she doesn’t have any future campaign events scheduled, though her campaign said in a statement Tuesday the results suggested many voters “are expressing deep concerns about Donald Trump.”
Trump has long been viewed as the frontrunner and all-but-certain Republican nominee, and has won every state primary thus far except for Vermont and Washington, D.C. Challengers including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy quickly dropped out of the race as the ex-president dominated the field, though Haley has so far been committed to remaining in the fight. While Trump’s eventual status as the Republican nominee has long been predicted, The Times reported in February that Trump has been eager to “meld” his campaign with the Republican National Committee—which can only happen once he’s the formal nominee—and secure the party’s resources and funding.