Sixteen jurisdictions will hold their presidential primaries and caucuses on Super Tuesday, March 5.
Voters in 15 states and one territory will be choosing who they want to run for president. Some states are also choosing who should run for governor or senator for their state, and some district attorneys, too.
What States Will Vote?
For Republicans, states that will vote on March 5 include Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia.For Democrats, voters will cast ballots in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and the territory of American Samoa. Also, the Iowa Democratic Party will announce the results of its mail-in presidential preference poll on Tuesday.
The highest-profile state race appears to be California because it will narrow down the field of candidates to succeed the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who died last year. There’s a crowded field of candidates that includes Democrat U.S. Reps. Barbara Lee, Katie Porter, and Adam Schiff. Republican Steve Garvey, a former baseball star, is also running.
California has a primary system in which all candidates appear on the same ballot regardless of party, and the top two finishers advance to the general election.
Notably, in Colorado and Maine, decisions were issued late last year to keep former President Donald Trump’s name off their respective ballots. But the Supreme Court on Monday ruled unanimously that he should remain on the ballots.
What’s At Stake
On the Republican side, 865 of 2,429 delegates, or more than 35 percent, will be up for grabs. To secure the party’s nomination, a candidate needs 1,215.For Democrats, some 1,420 delegates can be won. The Democrat candidate requires 1,968 delegates to win the nomination out of 3,934 delegates.
President Trump and President Joe Biden are expected to garner the most delegates. So far, both candidates have easily outperformed their respective competition.
The former president has 244 delegates, compared to his nearest rival, former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley, who has 43 delegates. President Biden, meanwhile has 206 delegates, and his remaining rivals—Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) and Marianne Williamson—have zero.
In previous elections, candidates who performed poorly on Super Tuesday generally dropped out. Ms. Haley has signaled that she will remain in the race as long as she feels she is “competitive.”
During the 2020 Democratic Party primaries, President Biden was counted out of the race but then performed well on Super Tuesday after he won the South Carolina primary days earlier. He won 10 of 14 states, forcing other candidates to leave the race.
So far, President Trump has won Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, the U.S. Virgin Islands, South Carolina, Michigan, Missouri, and Idaho. Ms. Haley’s first win was Washington D.C. on Sunday.
It appears Ms. Haley has no clear path to defeating President Trump, and Super Tuesday may be her final chance to at least slow him down. He and other Republicans have repeatedly called on her to drop out of the race so that the Republican Party can coalesce around President Trump’s campaign and defeat President Biden in the general election.
Former President Donald Trump. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)
Weather?
The National Weather Service indicates there are few weather warnings or advisories in effect across the country as of Monday evening, but the agency did note that there will be “another storm to bring additional heavy snows to northern California and southern Oregon” on Monday and Tuesday.And, it added, there will be “a wet weather pattern for large areas to the east of the Mississippi River” around the same time.
Aside from those disturbances, “above average” to “high” temperatures will impact most of the lower 48 states as well as “record high early morning lows possible from the Lower Lakes/Ohio Valley into the Northeast,” the agency added.
