Super Tuesday brought few surprises in the presidential race: Joe Biden and Donald Trump won state after state, pushing their delegate totals closer to what they each need to secure their party’s nomination.
Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador, did beat Trump in Vermont, her first state-level victory over the former president – and had previously won the District of Columbia – though she reportedly decided on Wednesday to drop out, with her team scheduling a press conference for the morning.
But a protest campaign designed to pressure the Biden administration to change its approach to the Israel-Gaza war is gaining strength, with support from nearly 250,000 voters across seven states, even before the full number of protest votes had been tallied.
After 100,000 voters chose “uncommitted” over Biden on their primary ballots in Michigan, the protest spread quickly to Alabama, Iowa, North Carolina, Tennessee, Massachusetts and Colorado. At least 50,000 voters chose “no preference” in Massachusetts, and more than 87,000 in North Carolina.
In Minnesota, which has a large Muslim population, nearly 50,000 “uncommitted” votes had been counted as of late Tuesday night, putting “uncommitted” in second place after Biden, and far ahead of challengers like Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson.
“It is not enough to simply use the word ‘ceasefire’ while Biden funds bombs that kill civilians every day,” the Vote Uncommitted Minnesota spokesperson, Asma Nizami, said in a statement, noting that the Minnesota effort had been organized “with just $20,000 and one week of campaigning”.
In Minneapolis, Ruth Schultz said she only voted in Minnesota’s primary as a way to join the uncommitted campaign and show how many registered Democrats disagreed with Biden’s current Israel policy.
“I want to see President Biden take a stronger stance for peace,” Schultz said.
“Their message is clear that they think this is an intolerable situation and that we can do more,” Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, told CNN on Tuesday night. “And I think the president is hearing that.”
There was no “uncommitted” option available to Democratic voters in California, the largest Super Tuesday state.
In notable down-ballot races, the California Democrat Adam Schiff, who managed the first Trump impeachment, advanced to the November runoff in the battle to fill Dianne Feinstein’s Senate seat, as did Steve Garvey, a Republican former Major League Baseball player with no political experience. Garvey’s profile among conservative voters benefited from millions of dollars in attack ads paid for by Schiff’s campaign, which the progressive congresswoman Katie Porter, who came in third, criticized as an undemocratic tactic meant to secure Schiff a Republican opponent with no chance of winning statewide in November.
Schiff, who has maintained a staunch pro-Israel stance throughout his campaign, and whose position on a temporary ceasefire is in step with the Biden administration, was interrupted by pro-ceasefire demonstrators during his victory speech on Tuesday night.
Adam Schiff’s entire victory speech tonite was interrupted by protesters chanting for a ceasefire in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/zptVYFagu1
— Christopher Cadelago (@ccadelago) March 6, 2024
In the race for governor of North Carolina, Mark Robinson, the Black lieutenant governor Trump dubbed “Martin Luther King on steroids”, won the Republican nomination. Robinson, who has referred to LGBTQ+ people as “filth”, has a history of sexist and inflammatory comments, particularly about Jews. The Democratic nominee is Josh Stein, the North Carolina attorney general who would be the state’s first Jewish governor.
In Texas, the attorney general, Ken Paxton, has been roiling the state legislative primaries with his own personal retribution election: he endorsed challengers to run against incumbents who voted for his impeachment last year, and a large number of the challengers have won and are taking the incumbents to a runoff, including David Covey, the Trump- and Paxton-endorsed challenger to the Republican speaker of the Texas house, Dale Phelan.
Polls have repeatedly found Americans are worried about political extremism as Trump runs for a second term, with three-quarters of Democratic voters saying they believed the outcome of the 2024 election would be very important to the future of democracy in the US.
In Vermont, Haley’s showing appeared to have been boosted by some Democrats who saw a vote for a Republican alternative as a way of pushing back against Trump.
“I’ve never seen democracy threatened by fascism so much in my entire life,” Wyatt Waterman, a Democrat who voted for Haley, told Vermont Public Radio. “This is not how I want to leave it for the generations following us, so I’m taking what time and resources I have to stand up to this tyranny.”
In remarks on Tuesday, the DNC chair, Jaime Harrison, called the 2024 election a “battle to defend our democracy and protect our fundamental freedoms”, and warned that Trump “is running a campaign of revenge and retribution”.
George Chidi, Rachel Leingang and Lauren Gambino contributed reporting
