Super Tuesday expected to boost Trump closer to clinching GOP nomination as Haley makes possible last stand

While Donald Trump is unlikely to clinch the 2024 Republican presidential nomination outright on Tuesday, the former president is poised to significantly pad his delegate lead over his last remaining rival, Nikki Haley, when 15 states hold primaries and caucuses on Super Tuesday.

With 854 Republican delegates at stake across contests from California to Massachusetts, a strong performance by Trump would move him considerably closer to the 1,215 delegates required to lock up the nomination and turn his full focus to a potential rematch against President Joe Biden.

“If every single conservative, Republican, and Trump supporter in these states shows up on Super Tuesday, we will be very close to finished with this primary contest,” Trump told his supporters ahead of the crucial day.

Among the biggest prizes are delegate-rich California with 169 delegates and Texas. Several states, including California, have winner-take-all or winner-take-most rules that could accelerate Trump’s delegate accumulation.

Scant public polling indicates the former president holds formidable leads over Haley, the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador during Trump’s tenure.

With additional large states like Georgia, Florida and Ohio holding primaries on March 12th and 19th, Trump is widely expected to reach the delegate threshold to clinch the nomination by mid-March.

His campaign predicted last month that even under the most favorable modeling for Haley, Trump would lock up the nomination no later than March 19th.

Trump has dominated the GOP race, boosted by his base’s energized support amid his unprecedented indictments last year related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

The former president kicked off the nominating calendar with victories in the early states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Michigan. He rolled into Super Tuesday with fresh wins last Saturday in Missouri and Idaho.

“We’ve been launching like a rocket to the Republican nomination,” Trump boasted at a rally in Virginia.

While Trump plans an election night event in Florida, Haley has no public events scheduled for Tuesday as she faces increasingly long odds. Her sole primary win so far was in Washington D.C. on Sunday.

Haley, who has stayed in to provide an alternative for voters uneasy with a Biden-Trump rematch, has not defined what benchmarks would constitute being “competitive” enough to remain in the race.

Biden, facing token opposition, is expected to dominate the 1,420 Democratic delegates up for grabs and move much closer to clinching renomination.