What is the Super Tuesday of the American election?
Super Tuesday is an important day in the primary stage of the American presidential race, during which 16 states, plus the inhabitants of the American Samoa archipelago, go to the polls.
What happens on Super Tuesday?
On this day, the largest number of states vote in the US presidential primaries. Usually, about one-third of all “delegates” attending the national convention of both the Democratic and Republican parties are determined on Shrove Tuesday.
Instead of single primaries or intra-party caucuses known as “caucuses”, a total of 15 Republican and 16 Democratic races are held simultaneously across the United States on Super Tuesday.
On this day, 874 votes out of a total of 2,429 votes will be determined in the final congress. The result of the Tuesday election usually determines the likely winner of intra-party contests. Officials or representatives of each party, known as electoral representatives, are awarded to the top candidate based on the outcome of each contest. The approval of each person’s candidacy in the respective party depends on obtaining a certain number of electoral representatives, and these representatives finally introduce the desired candidate on the day of the political gathering (party convention).
Donald Trump currently leads Congress with 122 delegates to Nikki Haley’s 24 votes. The candidate of the Republican Party needs at least 1,215 representatives to participate in the November elections, and this number is 1,968 for the Democratic Party.
In the Democratic camp, Biden has not lost in any state so far.
States voting on Shrove Tuesday include Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia. In Alaska, only Republican candidates will vote, and in Iowa, only Democrats will vote. In the territory of “Samoa,” only elections for democratic candidates are held.
In addition to the presidential primaries, some states also hold other elections such as governorship or congressional elections on “Big Tuesday”.
Trump situation
In the Republican camp, Nikki Haley will continue to try to win the party’s nomination from Donald Trump. Despite this, with the heavy defeats he has recorded in several states so far, he only has a chance to topple Trump on paper, and predictions indicate that he will lose the result to his rival in all states.
On Shrove Tuesday 2016, Trump outscored everyone in the primaries. Trump won seven states that day, though he lost a big one like Texas. Unlike this year, there was a hotter race among the electoral commissions in 2016, with Trump winning almost all the contests before Holy Tuesday.
On Super Tuesday 2020, Biden won 10 of the 14 contested contests. This year, however, he has not faced close competition from the Democrats and is expected to win all the contests on Big Tuesday.
The result of Tuesday’s vote is not known. Neither candidate can win a majority of the party’s delegates until late March, but both candidates are likely to pass the necessary number by March 12 or March 19 to secure their nomination.
Whatever the outcome, the primaries will continue until early June anyway. The Democratic National Convention is held in August and the Republican National Convention in July, where the final Democratic and Republican nominees are determined.