Joe Biden and adversary Donald Trump each secured enough delegates on Tuesday to secure their party nominations for the 2024 presidential race, networks predicted, all but ensuring a rematch and setting up one of the longest election campaigns in US history.
The outcomes of four statewide votes on Tuesday, the latest in the months-long race to pick the Democratic and Republican party flagbearers, were largely predetermined, as incumbent Biden and former President Trump had already defeated all primary contenders.
Biden won Georgia, a US swing state where Trump is on trial for allegedly stealing the previous election, and crossed the 1,968-delegate threshold.
Trump’s triumph in Washington helped him capture the 1,215 delegates required for the Republican nomination, propelling him and his Make America Great Again organization back into the heat of a presidential campaign.
Delegates, including party officials and loyalists, will attend national conventions to formally select their party’s presidential contender.
As the pair prepare for a reprise of their 2020 confrontation, Biden attacked his opponent in a statement.
“I am honoured that the broad coalition of voters representing the rich diversity of the Democratic Party across the country has put their faith in me once again to lead our party -– and our country -– in a moment when the threat Trump poses is greater than ever,” Biden said, assailing his rival’s “campaign of resentment, revenge, and retribution.”
Georgia, Mississippi, Washington, and Hawaii — the Pacific island state whose polls were set to finish hours later on Tuesday — were awarding a total of 161 delegates on the Republican side, with Donald Trump needing 137 of those to mathematically end the campaign.
Trump’s remarkable sweep of nearly all GOP state primaries to date has essentially secured the nomination far earlier than most candidates in previous campaigns, ensuring an extremely long, nearly eight-month slog for the White House, which will be contested by the two oldest men ever to take office.
Trump, who facing several criminal indictments in proceedings that have yet to derail his 2024 campaign, asserted in a victory statement that the Republican Party stands strong and unified behind him.
“We are now, under Crooked Joe Biden, a Third World Nation, which uses the Injustice System to go after his political opponent, ME!” he wrote on his Truth Social media platform.
“But fear not, we will not fail, we will take back our once great Country.”
‘Horror show’
Trump is campaigning for broad overhaul of what he called Biden’s “horror show” immigration policy, after successfully forcing Republicans to defeat the harshest border security measure negotiated in Congress in decades.
The recent murder of nursing student Laken Riley, reportedly by an undocumented migrant, has turned the issue into a flashpoint in Georgia, which was formerly firmly Republican but has become more competitive and is now viewed as critical to any candidate’s White House ambitions.
“We are looking at open borders and inflation. “Those two issues (have) already made people pretty agitated in Georgia,” Republican Brad Raffensperger, the state’s chief elections official, said Fox News.
“But that brutal murder…just took it to a whole new level.” “People in Georgia are furious.”
The fights have heightened scrutiny of Trump’s efforts to reverse the 2020 election in Georgia, a southern state where he lost to Biden by fewer than 12,000 votes, as he prepares for a third presidential bid.
The push resulted in one of the four indictments he faces, paving the way for a year of extraordinary drama as the 77-year-old balances frequent court appearances and another election campaign.
Trump, the first Republican presidential candidate to lose Georgia in nearly three decades, claimed foul play, but recounts and lawsuits found no proof of widespread voter fraud across the country.
On the Democratic side, Biden, like most incumbents, had a relaxing primary season, comfortably defeating two rivals who had routinely polled in the single digits.
However, he faces concerns about his age, inflation, and low approval ratings, all of which Trump’s campaign has sought to capitalize on.
Biden effectively ended his re-election campaign last week with his set-piece State of the Union speech, in which he sought to reassure voters about his age and launched a scathing attack on his “dangerous” election competitor.
Polls reveal that most Americans are dreading a rematch between the two men.