Tag: Super Tuesday

Nikki Haley to suspend her campaign, leaving Donald Trump as last major Republican candidate

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Nikki Haley will suspend her presidential campaign on March 6 after being soundly defeated across the country on Super Tuesday, according to people familiar with her decision, leaving Donald Trump as the last remaining major candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination.

Three people with direct knowledge, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly, confirmed Ms. Haley’s decision ahead of an announcement by her scheduled for March 6 morning.

Ms. Haley is not planning to endorse Mr. Trump in her announcement, according to the people with knowledge of her plans. Instead, she is expected to encourage him to earn the support of the coalition of moderate Republicans and independent voters who supported her.

Ms. Haley, a former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador, was Mr. Trump’s first significant rival when she jumped into the race in February 2023. She spent the final phase of her campaign aggressively warning the GOP against embracing Mr. Trump, whom she argued was too consumed by chaos and personal grievance to defeat President Joe Biden in the general election.

Her departure clears Mr. Trump to focus solely on his likely rematch in November with Mr. Biden. The former President is on track to reach the necessary 1,215 delegates to clinch the Republican nomination later this month.

Ms. Haley’s defeat marks a painful, if predictable, blow to those voters, donors and Republican Party officials who opposed Mr. Trump and his fiery brand of “Make America Great Again” politics. She was especially popular among moderates and college-educated voters, constituencies that will likely play a pivotal role in the general election. It’s unclear whether Mr. Trump, who recently declared that Ms. Haley donors would be permanently banned from his movement, can ultimately unify a deeply divided party.

Mr. Trump on March 5 night declared that the GOP was united behind him, but in a statement shortly afterward, Ms. Haley spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas said, “Unity is not achieved by simply claiming, ‘We’re united.’”

“Today, in state after state, there remains a large block of Republican primary voters who are expressing deep concerns about Donald Trump,” Ms. Perez-Cubas said. “That is not the unity our party needs for success. Addressing those voters’ concerns will make the Republican Party and America better.”

Ms. Haley leaves the 2024 presidential contest having made history as the first woman to win a Republican primary. She beat Trump in the District of Columbia on Sunday and Vermont on Tuesday.

She had insisted she would stay in the race through Super Tuesday and crossed the country campaigning in states holding Republican contests. Ultimately, she was unable to knock Mr. Trump off his glide path to a third straight nomination.

Ms. Haley’s allies note that she exceeded most of the political world’s expectations by making it as far as she did.

She had initially ruled out running against Mr. Trump in 2024. But she changed her mind and ended up launching her bid three months after he did, citing among other things the country’s economic troubles and the need for “generational change.” Ms. Haley, 52, later called for competency tests for politicians over the age of 75 — a knock on both Mr. Trump, who is 77, and President Joe Biden, who is 81.

Her candidacy was slow to attract donors and support, but she ultimately outlasted all of her other GOP rivals, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Tim Scott, her fellow South Carolinian whom she appointed to the Senate in 2012. And the money flowed in until the very end. Her campaign said it raised more than $12 million in February alone.

She gained popularity with many Republican donors, independent voters and the so-called “Never Trump” crowd, even though she criticized the criminal cases against him as politically motivated and pledged that, if President, she would pardon him if he were convicted in federal court.

As the field consolidated, she and Mr. DeSantis battled it out through the early-voting states for a distant second to Mr. Trump. The two went after each other in debates, ads and interviews, often more directly than they went after Mr. Trump.

The campaign’s focus on foreign policy following Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel in October tilted the campaign into Ms. Haley’s wheelhouse, giving her an opportunity to showcase her experience from the U.N., tying the war to her conservative domestic priorities and arguing that both Israel and the U.S. could be made vulnerable by what she called “distractions.”

Ms. Haley was slow to criticize her former boss directly.

As she campaigned across early states, Ms. Haley often complimented some of Mr. Trump’s foreign policy achievements but gradually inserted more critiques into her campaign speeches. She argued Mr. Trump’s hyperfocus on trade with China led him to ignore security threats posed by a major U.S. rival. She warned that weak support for Ukraine would “only encourage” China to invade Taiwan, a viewpoint shared by several of her GOP rivals, even as many Republican voters questioned whether the U.S. should send aid to Ukraine.

In November, Ms. Haley — an accountant who had consistently touted her lean campaign — won the backing of the political arm of the powerful Koch network. AFP Action blasted early-state voters with mailers and door-knockers, committing its nationwide coalition of activists and virtually unlimited funds to helping Ms. Haley defeat Mr. Trump.

With Mr. Trump refusing to participate in primary debates, Ms. Haley went head-to-head with Mr. DeSantis in a single debate, displaying a combative style that seemed to sit poorly with even those committed to support her in the Iowa caucuses. She would finish third.

Ms. Haley’s name emerged as a possible running mate for Mr. Trump, with the former President reportedly asking allies what they thought of adding her to his possible ticket. As Ms. Haley appeared to gain ground, some of Mr. Trump’s backers worked to tamp down the notion.

While Ms. Haley initially notably declined to rule out the possibility, she said while campaigning in New Hampshire in January that serving as “anybody’s vice president” is “off the table.”

After Mr. DeSantis exited the campaign following Mr. Trump’s record-setting win in the Iowa caucuses, Ms. Haley hoped that New Hampshire voters would feel so strongly about keeping the former President away from the White House that they would turn out to support her in large numbers.

“America does not do coronations,” Ms. Haley said at a VFW hall in Franklin on the eve of the New Hampshire primary. “Let’s show all of the media class and the political class that we’ve got a different plan in mind, and let’s show the country what we can do.”

But she would lose New Hampshire and then refused to participate in Nevada’s caucuses, arguing the State’s rules strongly favoured Mr. Trump. She instead ran in the State’s primary, which didn’t count for any delegates for the nomination. She still finished a distant second to “ none of these candidates,” an option Nevada offers to voters dissatisfied with their choices and used by many Mr. Trump supporters to oppose her.

She had long vowed to win South Carolina but backed off of that pledge as the primary drew nearer. She crisscrossed the state that twice elected her governor on a bus tour, holding smaller events than Mr. Trump’s less frequent rallies and suggesting she was better equipped to beat Mr. Biden than him.

She lost South Carolina by 20 points and Michigan three days later by 40. The Koch brothers’ AFP Action announced after her South Carolina loss that it would stop organizing for her.

But by staying in the campaign, Ms. Haley drew enough support from suburbanites and college-educated voters to highlight Mr. Trump’s apparent weaknesses with those groups.

Ms. Haley has made clear she doesn’t want to serve as Mr. Trump’s Vice President or run on a third-party ticket arranged by the group No Labels. She leaves the race with an elevated national profile that could help her in a future presidential run.

In recent days, she backed off a pledge to endorse the eventual Republican nominee that was required of anyone participating in party debates.

“I think I’ll make what decision I want to make,” she told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

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Super Tuesday’s key takeaways: A Biden-Trump rematch and warnings for both

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Super Tuesday yielded no surprises, with US President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump emerging the biggest winners in the biggest single day of voting in the US primaries. But there were cautionary signals for both candidates as the 2024 campaign season heads for a battering phase in the leadup to November’s presidential election.


Hours after the polls closed in California on Super Tuesday, the two candidates heading for a foreseen presidential rematch set the tone of their campaigns ahead of the November vote.

It was predictable and dismaying for the electors who matter most in the 2024 US presidential election: undecided voters in key swing states.

The Democrat incumbent, President Joe Biden, warned of an “existential” national threat and “darkness” if his Republican rival wins the White House race.

“Four years ago, I ran because of the existential threat Donald Trump posed to the America we all believe in,” Biden wrote in a statement. “Tonight’s results leave the American people with a clear choice: Are we going to keep moving forward or will we allow Donald Trump to drag us backwards into the chaos, division, and darkness that defined his term in office?”


The Republican Party’s quasi-nominee, who is now all but certain to face the man who ousted him from the White House four years ago, delivered a characteristic victory speech at his Mar-a-Lago beach club in Florida.

In a rambling address to cheering supporters, Trump aired his belief that the US is a “third world country” when it comes to elections and called Biden “the worst president in the history of our country”.


The scripted speeches, predicted headlines and low voter turnout made the biggest day in the 2024 US primary elections a “Stupor Tuesday”. The overriding message after a day that saw 15 states and one US territory select their candidates was clear: many Americans are not enthused by the rematch.

But not everything was predicted and predictable on Super Tuesday. Behind the inexorable Biden v. Trump face-off were key takeaways that will be examined in the lead-up to the November election. 

What’s next for Nikki Haley and her supporters 

Nikki Haley, Trump’s only Republican rival, did not win enough delegates on Super Tuesday to take her anywhere close to the 1,215 needed to secure her party’s presidential nomination.

The 52-year-old former UN ambassador did however snap Vermont, her lone state victory after last week’s Washington DC primary win.

But while her performance was not substantial enough to deny Trump the Republican nomination, it was significant enough to deny him a clean sweep of states.

That’s where the demographics of Haley’s supporters matter, and it’s an electorate that will be much discussed in the months leading up to the November election.

“Her entire campaign centred around those more urban areas where there is a higher concentration of college-educated, university-educated people,” explained FRANCE 24’s Fraser Jackson, reporting from Washington.

Trump’s triumphant showing on Super Tuesday underscored a development that has been in the making over the past few years: the Grand Old Party (GOP) has been taken over by his culturally conservative, blue-collar, non-urban supporters.

But that still leaves a very important demographic up for grabs in the November vote.

“She [Haley] has been polling about 20 to 40 percent of the GOP voters in this primary. That is still a significant chunk of people,” explained Jackson. “That’s a significant chunk of people who say that they don’t want Donald Trump.”

The results in Vermont, a state represented in the Senate by icon of the US left Bernie Sanders, showed that there exists a stubborn chunk of Republican voters who are not as enthusiastic about Trump as expected.

“It’s going to be in those margins that Joe Biden and Donald Trump have to vie for those Nikki Haley voters, to try to pull them to their side,” said Jackson. “And that’s what we’re going to be watching for the next couple of months.”

The question, though, is not just about Haley’s plans after her Super Tuesday drubbing, with pundits debating whether she will endorse Trump.

It’s a matter of whether her supporters are enthused enough about the Democratic candidate to cross party lines.

Biden’s Gaza problem

The Democratic incumbent may have won the Super Tuesday primaries, but that’s because he hardly faced any competition with just a handful of long-shot candidates on the ballots.

In a telling surprise, it was a long-shot candidate that provided some spark in an overwhelmingly dull primaries night. That’s when Baltimore businessman Jason Palmer won the US territory of American Samoa, denying Biden a lone Democratic contest on Super Tuesday.

Residents of American Samoa, as in other US territories, vote in primaries. They do not however have representation in the electoral college, a critical factor in America’s aged, creaky democratic system.

Biden’s biggest problem came from his party’s left, with a protest vote against the US president’s support for Israel drawing the attention of the establishment party’s advisers and strategists.

Exactly a week before Super Tuesday, voters in the Michigan primary delivered a warning shot to Biden, when more than 100,000 people, or 13 percent of all voters, marked their ballots “uncommitted” to show their opposition to the president’s position on the Gaza war. 

A week later, the uncommitted figures were also noteworthy. In Minnesota, with almost 90 percent of the expected votes counted, 19 percent of Democrats marked their ballots “uncommitted” to show their opposition to Biden’s perceived disregard for the Palestinians in Israel’s war against Hamas. 

The “uncommitted” vote was on the Democratic ballot in six other Super Tuesday states – Alabama, Colorado, Iowa, Massachusetts, North Carolina and Tennessee.

Support in those states ranged from 3.9 percent in Iowa to 12.7 percent in North Carolina, with more than 85 percent of the votes counted in each of those states, according to Edison Research.

The nearly 13 percent mark in North Carolina was significant, noted Jackson. “That is something to watch, because North Carolina is a state that the Democrats are hoping to flip this election,” he explained. “It could be a real battleground state.”

Georgia on their minds

With Biden and Trump sweeping Super Tuesday, the next stop to watch is Georgia, with both candidates heading to the Peach State over the weekend.

While the southeastern US state holds its presidential primaries on March 12 – their official reason for having duelling events there – in reality Georgia is on their minds because of its importance in November’s general election.

On Saturday, Biden plans a visit to the Atlanta area, a rich source of Democratic votes, while Trump will be in the Georgia city of Rome. The events will be their first general election split-screen moment in a key battleground state.

In the 2020 election, Biden beat Trump in Georgia by a miniscule 0.23 percent of the vote and Trump’s efforts to overturn Biden’s win there has since led to the former president’s indictment by the Fulton County district attorney for election interference.

Georgia will again be a critical swing state in the expected rematch between Biden and Trump in November, and so Saturday’s visits by both men will likely be the first of many between now and the general election.

(With Reuters)



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Biden and Trump sweep Super Tuesday primaries; put pressure on Haley to end her campaign

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U.S. President Joe Biden from the Democratic Party and his Republican predecessor Donald Trump have swept in their parties’ presidential nomination primaries held in 15 states across the country, paving the way for a rematch between them in November and putting pressure on Indian-American candidate Nikki Haley to quit.

After Super Tuesday’s election results, Mr. Trump, 77, is hoping to establish a commanding lead in the delegate count and vanquish his only Republican opponent, Ms. Haley.

Seeking his re-election, Mr. Biden, 81, swept almost all the Democratic primary states.

He lost to Jason Palmer in American Samoa.

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“Joe Biden isn’t facing any major competition in the primary cycle, and has won all the Democratic contests so far tonight, CNN projects, as he gears up for a likely rematch with Mr. Trump in November,” CNN said.

Ms. Haley, 52, the former U.S. envoy to the U.N. failed to make a mark Tuesday even as she showed strong support in the states of Vermont, where she won.

That victory, however, will do little to dent Mr. Trump’s primary dominance.

Mr. Trump prevailed in most of the Super Tuesday states: California, Texas, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Virginia, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Massachusetts, Utah, Minnesota, Colorado, Arkansas and Maine.

Super Tuesday is an important phase of presidential primaries when the early contests are over, and voters from multiple states cast ballots in primaries timed to occur on the same date. Almost all the results were one-sided in favour of Trump except for Vermont, where the winning difference was about one per cent.

More than a third of all the Republican delegates were at stake on Super Tuesday, the biggest haul of any date on the primary calendar.

To win the presidential nomination of the Republican party, either of the two candidates needs 1,215 delegates, who are elected during the primaries. Before Super Tuesday, Mr. Trump had 244 delegates in his kitty, while Ms. Haley had 43.

Speaking from Palm Beach, Florida, Mr. Trump claimed that “we have a very divided country,” and vowed to unify it soon.

“This was an amazing night and an amazing day, it’s been an incredible period of time in our country’s history,” Mr. Trump said at his election night watch party at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.

“We have a very divided country. We have a country [where] a political person uses weaponisation against his political opponents,” he said.

He compared the state of the U.S. political system to “third-world countries”.

“Never happened here. It happens in other countries, but they’re third-world countries. And in some ways, we’re a third-world country.” Talking up some of his achievements from his time in office, notably the half-built border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, Mr. Trump claimed he delivered “the safest borders in the history of our country” and went on to rail against what he described as “migrant crime”, without citing any evidence.

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“And so the world is laughing at us, the world is taking advantage of us,” he said.

He goes on to describe his aims to make the U.S. “energy independent and energy dominant”.

“All the… tragedy, you will not have to think of it. All of the problems we have today, we would not have had any of them,” he said.

“You would only have success and that is what ultimately going to unify this country and unify this party,” he added.

‘Trump driven by grievance and grift’: Biden

Earlier, Mr. Biden touted the work his administration has accomplished in its first term in office while issuing a stark warning that a second Trump term would mean a return to “chaos, division, and darkness.” “Four years ago, I ran because of the existential threat Donald Trump posed to the America we all believe in,” Mr. Biden wrote in a statement, highlighting progress under his administration on jobs, inflation, prescription drug prices, and gun control.

He then warned that if Mr. Trump returns to the White House, the progress his administration has made will be at risk.

“(Mr. Trump) is driven by grievance and grift, focused on his own revenge and retribution, not the American people,” Mr. Biden noted.

‘Haley getting nowhere’: Trump

Ms. Haley, the former South Carolina governor, said she has not made a final decision as to whether or not she would endorse her ex-boss Mr. Trump if she ends her presidential bid, but her campaign is receiving a lot of feedback on the subject, sources familiar with recent discussions tell CNN.

People who are close to Ms. Haley have different opinions. Some believe that it would be good for her to back Mr. Trump because she would be viewed as a team player. Others ardently oppose her endorsing him because that would give Ms. Haley the freedom to be critical of Mr. Trump and build her own movement. They have shared those opinions with Ms. Haley and her campaign in recent days and weeks, sources said, CNN said.

Ms. Haley herself has recently said she is not focused on endorsing anyone because she is focused on winning herself.

Mr. Trump, however, in an interview on Tuesday bashed Ms. Haley, saying she was angry because her campaign is “just getting nowhere.” CNN reported earlier this evening that Mr. Trump’s team is aware he won’t cross the delegate threshold tonight to become the presumptive Republican nominee, but the hope is that he secures enough delegates to ensure he does meet that milestone as early as next Tuesday, March 12.

Mr. Trump’s campaign is also hoping that a definitive win in Super Tuesday will effectively force Ms. Haley to drop out of the race.

“President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump romped through the opening contests of Super Tuesday, piling up wins in states including Texas, the second-largest delegate prize of the night, as they moved inexorably toward their parties’ nominations and a rematch for the White House in November,” The New York Times reported.

“Former president Donald Trump and President Biden are dominating Super Tuesday contests with roughly one-third of the delegates at stake that will determine the Republican and Democratic party nominations. Voters in 15 states are participating in primaries or caucuses,” The Washington Post said.

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Coast-to-coast Super Tuesday elections set to kick off Biden and Trump rematch

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President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are poised to move much closer to winning their party’s nominations during the biggest day of the primary campaign on Tuesday, setting up a historic rematch that many voters would rather not endure.

Super Tuesday elections are being held in 16 states and one territory — from Alaska and California to Vermont and Virginia. Hundreds of delegates are at stake, the biggest haul for either party on any single day.

While much of the focus is on the presidential race, there are also important down-ballot contests. California voters will choose candidates who will compete to fill the Senate seat long held by Dianne Feinstein. The governor’s race will take shape in North Carolina, a state that both parties are fiercely contesting ahead of November. And in Los Angeles, a progressive prosecutor is attempting to fend off an intense reelection challenge in a race that could serve as a barometer of the politics of crime.

But the premier races center on Biden and Trump. And in a dramatic departure from past Super Tuesdays, both the Democratic and Republican contests are effectively sealed this year.

The two men have easily repelled challengers in the opening rounds of the campaign and are in full command of their bids — despite polls making it clear that voters don’t want this year’s general election to be identical to the 2020 race. A new AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll finds a majority of Americans don’t think either Biden or Trump has the necessary mental acuity for the job.

“Both of them failed, in my opinion, to unify this country,” said Brian Hadley, 66, of Raleigh, North Carolina.

Neither Trump nor Biden will be able to formally clinch their party’s nominations on Super Tuesday. The earliest either can become his party’s presumptive nominee is March 12 for Trump and March 19 for Biden.

The final days before Tuesday demonstrated the unique nature of this year’s campaign. Rather than barnstorming the states holding primaries, Biden and Trump held rival events last week along the U.S.-Mexico border, each seeking to gain an advantage in the increasingly fraught immigration debate.

After the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 on Monday to restore Trump to primary ballots following attempts to ban him for his role in helping spark the Capitol riot, Trump pointed to the 91 criminal counts against him to accuse Biden of weaponizing the courts. 

“Fight your fight yourself,” Trump said. “Don’t use prosecutors and judges to go after your opponent.” 

State of the Union speech

Biden delivers the State of the Union address on Thursday, then will campaign in the key swing states of Pennsylvania and Georgia.

The president will defend policies responsible for “record job creation, the strongest economy in the world, increased wages and household wealth, and lower prescription drug and energy costs,” White House communications director Ben LaBolt said in a statement. 

That’s in contrast, LaBolt continued, to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement, which consists of “rewarding billionaires and corporations with tax breaks, taking away rights and freedoms, and undermining our democracy.”

Biden’s campaign called extra attention to Trump’s most provocative utterances on the campaign trail, like when he evoked Adolf Hitler in suggesting that immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of the U.S. and said he’d seek to serve as a dictator during his first day back in the White House. 

Trump recently told a gala for Black conservatives that he believed African Americans empathized with his four criminal indictments, drawing a sharp rebuke from the Biden campaign and top Democrats around the country for comparing personal legal struggles to the historical injustices Black people have faced in the U.S.

Trump has nonetheless already vanquished more than a dozen major Republican challengers and now has only one left: Nikki Haley, the former president’s onetime U.N. ambassador who was also twice elected governor of her home state of South Carolina. 

Haley has hopscotched across the country, visiting at least one Super Tuesday state almost daily for more than a week and arguing that her base of support — while far smaller than Trump’s — suggests the former president will lose to Biden.

“We can do better than two 80-year-old candidates for president,” Haley said at a rally Monday in the Houston suburbs.

Haley has maintained strong fundraising and notched her first primary victory over the weekend in Washington, D.C., a Democrat-run city with few registered Republicans. Trump tried to turn that victory into a loss for the overall campaign, scoffing that she had been “crowned queen of the swamp.” 

Vulnerabilities

Though Trump has dominated the early Republican primary calendar, his victories have shown vulnerabilities with some influential voter blocs, especially in college towns like Hanover, New Hampshire, home to Dartmouth College, or Ann Arbor, where the University of Michigan is located, as well as in some areas with high concentrations of independents.

Still, Haley winning any of Super Tuesday’s contests would take an upset. And a Trump sweep would only intensify pressure on her to leave the race.

Biden has his own problems, including low approval ratings and polls suggesting that many Americans, even a majority of Democrats, don’t want to see the 81-year-old running again. The president’s easy Michigan primary win last week was spoiled slightly by an “uncommitted” campaign organized by activists who disapprove of the president’s handling of Israel’s war in Gaza.

Allies of the “uncommitted” vote are pushing similar protest votes elsewhere. One to watch is Minnesota, which has a significant population of Muslims, including in its Somali American community, and liberals disaffected with Biden. Gov. Tim Walz, a Biden ally, told The Associated Press last week that he expected some votes for “uncommitted” on Tuesday.

While Biden is the oldest president in U.S. history, his reelection campaign argues that skeptics will come around once it is clear it’ll be him or Trump in November. Trump is 77 and faces his own questions about age that have been exacerbated by flubs like over the weekend when he mistakenly suggested he was running against Barack Obama.

That hasn’t shaken Trump’s ardent supporters’ faith in him.

“Trump would eat him up,” Ken Ballos, a retired police officer who attended a weekend Trump rally in Virginia, said of a November rematch, adding that Biden “would look like a fool up there.”

(AP)

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Primaries, caucuses, debates: Key dates ahead of the 2024 US presidential election

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The US will elect its new president this year on November 5. Before that happens, candidates including incumbent President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump will have to jump through several hoops. The race to the finish line will be a busy one, fraught with caucuses, primaries, conventions and debates. These are the key dates to watch for in this highly charged year for US politics. 

The 60th US presidential election is the political event on everyone’s lips this year. On November 5, a new POTUS will be chosen to occupy the White House for the next four years. Both the incumbent President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump are in the race for a re-election and face a tough path ahead.

But in order to join the race to become president, candidates must first be nominated through caucuses and primaries.

Caucuses are meetings run by political parties organised at the county, precinct or district level. Participants split into groups according to the candidate they support, which determines the number of delegates each candidate will receive.

Primaries are held at the state level and allow citizens to vote for their preferred candidate anonymously, by casting a secret ballot. Results are then taken into account to award the winner delegates.

The Iowa caucus takes place on January 15 and is the curtain raiser, followed by the New Hampshire primary on January 23. The first major event on the calendar is Super Tuesday on March 5, when the majority of states hold primaries or caucuses to vote for their favourite candidate.

Delegates will then go on to represent their state at national party conventions before the big vote in November.

Iowa Republican caucus

January 15 – Republicans in Iowa kick off the race to the presidential election by holding the first caucus today. Up until now, GOP candidates have raced to make their pitch to voters. The outcome of the Iowa caucus is often a make-or-break moment for candidates vying to become the party nominee.

For Democrats in Iowa, things look a little different. They will choose their candidate entirely by mail-in ballot today and release the results on March 5, Super Tuesday. The decision prompted by President Biden is partly a response to the 2020 tech meltdown that delayed results and triggered hours-long waits for voters, but also a way of calling an end to a system he deems “restrictive” and “anti-worker”.

Republican presidential debates

January 18 – Broadcasters ABC News and WMUR-TV will host a Republican presidential primary debate in Manchester, New Hampshire. Candidates who came out on top in the Iowa caucus will be invited to spar alongside any other hopefuls who meet a 10% polling threshold.

January 21 – CNN will host a debate at New England College in New Hampshire. Again, the top three candidates from the Iowa caucuses will be invited to participate, as well as any candidates who “receive at least 10 percent in three separate national and/or New Hampshire polls of Republican primary voters that meet CNN’s standards for reporting,” according to CNN. “One of the three polls must be an approved CNN poll of likely New Hampshire Republican primary voters.”

New Hampshire primary

January 23 – The first primary run by state and local governments will be held in New Hampshire, where participants will vote for their preferred Republican or Democratic candidate in a secret ballot.

Though the Democratic National Committee (DNC) suggested changing the order of states, New Hampshire decided to hold on to their tradition of going first. Biden had pushed for the first-in-the-nation primary to be held in South Carolina, a state that helped catapult him into office in 2020 and whose population is much more diverse than New Hampshire’s.

The dispute means Biden’s name will be missing from the New Hampshire presidential primary ballot this year.

South Carolina Democratic primary

February 3 – South Carolina will vote in the Democratic primary. President Joe Biden specifically requested the first primary be held here because of the state’s large African-American population, who he hopes will help recharge his bid for re-election. The primary is not competitive, but it will be the first electoral test of Biden’s situation, as many local Democratic focus groups have expressed their disenchantment with the political process.

Moving the first primary here from Iowa marks the biggest change to the Democratic National Committee’s nomination process in decades.

The Republican primary in South Carolina will take place a few weeks later on February 24.

Nevada primary and caucus

February 6 – Democratic primary will be held in Nevada.

February 8 – Republican caucus will be held in Nevada.  

Michigan primary

February 27 – Both Republicans and Democrats will vote in this primary. Michigan, a Democratic-run state, brought forward its presidential primary in a move opposed by Republicans. Republicans will instead choose the majority of their delegates during caucuses a few days later in March.

Super Tuesday

March 5 – It’s the biggest day of primaries in the US and often helps whittle down the scope of candidates in the race to become president. A third of all delegates are awarded on this day alone, which is considered the most important day of the presidential nomination process.

Both Democrats and Republicans will hold primaries in over a dozen states including Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia.

Democrats in Utah will also vote in their primary while Republicans hold their caucuses in the state. Republicans in Alaska vote in their primary.

Last primaries of the race

March 12 ­– Georgia, Mississippi and Washington will each hold primaries. Republicans in Hawaii will hold caucuses.

March 19 – Primaries held in Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Kansas and Ohio.

June 4 – The last states to hold their presidential primaries will do so on this day. The clock is ticking for those states which have not yet set their primary or caucus dates.

National conventions

July 15 to 18 – Wisconsin will host the Republican national convention in Milwaukee, where the party will officially choose its candidate.

August 19 to 22 – The Democratic national convention will take place in Chicago, Illinois.

These conventions are important because they determine which presidential and vice presidential nominees will represent the Republican and Democratic parties. In order to become a presidential nominee, a candidate has to win the support of a majority of delegates. That usually happens through the party’s state primaries and caucuses.

State delegates will head to the national conventions to vote and confirm their choice of candidates. But if a candidate does not get the majority of a party’s delegates, convention delegates choose the nominee.

The two conventions are also when presidential nominees officially announce who will run with them for vice president, draw up an election programme and launch their autumn campaigns.

Presidential debates

September 16 – The first presidential debate will take place in San Marcos, Texas.

September 25 – The only vice-presidential debate will take place on this day in Easton, Pennsylvania.

October 1 – The second presidential debate will take place in Petersburg, Virginia.

October 9 – The third and last presidential debate will take place in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Election day

November 5 – US voters who are registered will head to the polls in the final day of voting for the 2024 US presidential election. It could take days for the election result to be known, especially if it is close and mail-in ballots are a factor.

It takes 270 electoral votes out of a possible 538 to win the presidential election.

Results

January 6, 2025 – The sitting vice president presides over the Electoral College vote count at a joint session of Congress, announces the results and declares who has been elected.

This is the moment former president Trump lambasted his vice president Mike Pence in 2021 for refusing to try to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s win. As a result, the US Capitol was stormed by rioters and some chanted “hang Mike Pence” as they tried to stop the count. Biden’s win was later certified.

Since then, Congress has passed the Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022, which requires approval of one-fifth of the House and Senate to consider a challenge to a state’s results – a much higher bar than existed before, when any single lawmaker from either chamber could trigger a challenge.

January 20, 2025 – The president and vice president are sworn into office at the inauguration ceremony.

This article was adapted from the original version in French.

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