Former President Donald Trump notched victories in Georgia and Mississippi’s primaries on Tuesday, inching him closer to the Republican nomination, according to The Associated Press.
Trump secured 83.4% support in Georgia, as well as 91.8% of the share in Mississippi, the AP projected at the time of writing. The Washington primary and Hawaii caucus have yet to be called.
The former president is expected to surpass the Republican National Committee’s required 1,215 delegate threshold from Tuesday’s contests to become the presumptive nominee, according to the AP’s count. President Joe Biden reached his party’s 1,968 target after a win in Georgia.
Across all of the nominating contests on Tuesday, 161 Republican delegates and 254 Democratic delegates are on the line, according to the AP.
Biden, who also secured a win in Mississippi on Tuesday, already won Hawaii‘s Democratic caucus on March 6 with 66% support, according to the AP. The president is likely to face an “uncommitted” protest vote in Washington over his handling of the Israel-Hamas war, as he did in several Super Tuesday states and Michigan.
Trump won nearly all of the Super Tuesday states on March 5, while former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley was able to narrowly secure the blue state of Vermont. Haley dropped out of the Republican primary the following day after only notching two wins this cycle, including Washington, D.C., but did not endorse Trump.
The former president notched big wins in the first four nominating states — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina — as well as in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Michigan, Idaho, Missouri and North Dakota.
Trump is currently leading Biden by 1.7 points in the RealClearPolitics average for a potential 2024 rematch, and is also ahead in crucial battleground states like Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin.
Mary Lou Masters on March 12, 2024