The Fallout from Super Tuesday

This week’s Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses to decide on the Democratic and Republican parties’ candidates for this year’s presidential election in the United States resulted in few surprises.  In fact, the results from the twelve states that voted this week largely strengthened the leading candidates on both sides, Hillary Clinton for the Democrats and Donald Trump for the Republicans.  What Super Tuesday did highlight was the fact that the US electorate is changing and these changes have caused a major upheaval in both parties.  Nevertheless, one party, the Democrats, are feeling very confident that their front-runner is in a strong position to win November’s presidential election.  The other party, the Republicans, continue to scramble to find a way to manage a situation in which Donald Trump has emerged as their likely presidential candidate despite opposition from much of the party leadership.

For the Democrats, Super Tuesday resulted in a clearer picture for their path to retain the presidency.  While the left-wing insurgency of Bernie Sanders continued as he won four states (Colorado, Minnesota, Oklahoma and Vermont), Hillary Clinton performed even better than expected, winning seven states, including Massachusetts, which was viewed as a state that Sanders had to win.  Moreover, Clinton won a huge share of the black and Hispanic vote in the primaries in southern states, enabling her to win large victories across the South.  Overall, Clinton expanded her lead in terms of delegates over Sanders on Super Tuesday, and when her “super-delegates” are added to her total, her path to the Democratic Party’s nomination is quite clear.  Nevertheless, Sanders remains very popular with younger and more left-leaning voters and he could still do well in many upcoming primaries in the Mid-West and the West.  Moreover, a prolonged campaign in which Sanders continues to move the debate to the left and to attract younger voters to his campaign could prove detrimental to Clinton in November.

On the Republican side, Super Tuesday offered few surprises as the results of the eleven primaries and caucuses that the party held this week followed closely to pre-election polls.  Moreover, conservative southern states made up the majority of the races this week, playing into the hands of the two leading Republican candidates.  Once again, the populist billionaire Donald Trump emerged as the leading Republican candidate for the presidency, winning seven states (Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Alabama, Arkansas and Vermont) and expanding his lead in terms of delegates.  Meanwhile, the arch-conservative candidate Ted Cruz won this week’s big prize, his home state of Texas, as well as neighboring Oklahoma and the state of Alaska.  Finally, the leading moderate Republican candidate, Marco Rubio, pulled out a victory in Minnesota, but failed to emerge as the leading rival to Trump among the five remaining Republican candidates.  Moreover, the moderate wing of the Republican Party, represented by Rubio and Ohio Governor John Kasich, are seeing their chances of selecting the party’s presidential candidate diminish with each victory by Trump and Cruz.

Looking ahead, a number of vital primaries and caucuses will take place in the coming weeks that will move both parties closer towards selection a candidate for the most powerful office in the world.  On the Democratic side, there is little to suggest that Hillary Clinton will not emerge as their candidate, despite the strong performance of Bernie Sanders in recent months.  It is on the Republican side that most of the drama will take place.  Later this week, the Republicans will hold five more primaries, the three largest of which are all in the South, thus favoring Donald Trump, who has performed very well there.  Afterwards, the focus will shift to some of the United States’ most important swing states such as Florida, Ohio, Michigan and North Carolina, states that a Republican candidate has to win a majority of in order to win back the White House for their party.  Should Trump defeat Rubio and Kasich in their home states (Florida and Ohio respectively), then there will be little doubt that he will go to the Republican convention in Cleveland this summer with the largest number of delegates (if not an outright majority of delegates).  However, Republican leaders are dismayed by the fact that their party could be represented by a man they despise, as well as one who could suffer a Barry-Goldwater-like defeat in November’s presidential election.  As such, expect more surprises as the world’s most expensive and convoluted election process moves forward.