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Updated 11:12 p.m.
Mere minutes after the polls closed in Virginia, former President Donald Trump was the projected winner of the commonwealth’s Super Tuesday GOP primary. With 95% of the precincts reporting, Trump led Nikki Haley 63.1% to 34.8%, or a total of 435,579 to 240,367 votes. The former South Carolina governor is the only other candidate among the six Republicans on the ballot still in the race.
President Joe Biden, the Democratic incumbent, also comfortably beat his two intraparty challengers who made the ballot in Virginia: activist Marianne Williamson and Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips. Biden received 89% of the votes (or 305,712) from Democrats statewide, while Williamson got 8% (27,036) and Phillips 3.5% (11,998), according to unofficial data from the Virginia Department of Elections.
With his glaring victory in Tuesday’s Republican primary, Trump came close to finally clinching the nomination for the GOP presidential candidate, although he did not cross the finish line, said David Richards, a political analyst and chair of the political science program at the University of Lynchburg.
“Mathematically, we’re just not there yet, but by next Tuesday or possibly in two weeks, Trump will almost certainly have collected enough delegates, 1,215, to have more than 50% of delegates and win the nomination outright. From there on primaries will just be icing on the cake,” Richards said.
By Tuesday, Trump had already defeated the other four GOP candidates who qualified to be on the primary ballot in Virginia this year: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Texas pastor Ryan Binkley, who all dropped out weeks ago.
Biden, who was the only major candidate on the Democratic side, also did as well as was expected, Richards said. He carried every locality in Southwest and Southside Virginia.
“Super Tuesday really just confirmed what has been evident for months — 2024 it will be a Trump-Biden rematch, despite the best efforts by DeSantis, Haley, Robert Kennedy Jr. or others to change that outcome.”
Virginia is one of 15 states, along with American Samoa, participating in Super Tuesday, when the highest number of states hold presidential primary elections all on the same day. For Republicans, it was the first since 2016, when Trump won in the commonwealth with 34.8%, or 356,896 votes, defeating a total of 12 contenders for the GOP nomination that were on the ballot that year.
In a likely matchup for the presidency in November, Biden still maintains a 4-point lead over Trump (47% to 43%) among Virginia voters, despite a low approval rating of just 33%, according to a new poll released last week by the Institute for Policy and Opinion Research at Roanoke College. If Haley were to be the Republican nominee, she would have a 9-point lead over Biden (49% to 40%), the poll found.
Haley outperformed Trump in just one locality in Southwest Virginia and Southside. In Lexington, she led the former president with 57% to 40%, or 248 to 175 votes.
Richards, the political analyst, predicts that Haley will suspend her campaign soon.
“I am not sure what else she can do at this point, except throw sand in the gears as Trump hurdles to the nomination in July at the GOP convention,” Richards said. “I would look for Biden and Trump to both step up attacks on each other as we go into spring and summer.”
