Trump and Biden clinch 2024 presidential nominations
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Updated: 10:20 p.m.
The general election rematch between former President Donald Trump and President Biden is now official.
Both men have now secured the required delegates to be their respective party’s nominee.
Biden and Trump won nearly every contest in the presidential nominating calendar so far but the important threshold of winning a majority of delegates to the party conventions this summer has finally been met. Tuesday’s contests included primaries in Georgia, a key swing state for both parties, as well as Washington state and Mississippi.
Trump has been a de facto incumbent throughout the process, holding off several challengers though ceding a meaningful share of votes to former S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley.
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Biden did not face serious opposition in the primaries, but opposition to his policies around Israel and Gaza has led to some delegates going to “uncommitted.”
In Biden’s response to securing the nomination earlier Tuesday he took a swipe at Trump.
“Despite the challenges we faced when I took office, we’re in the middle of a comeback: wages are rising faster than inflation, jobs are coming back, consumer confidence has soared,” Biden said. “Amid this progress, we face a sobering reality: Freedom and democracy are at risk here at home in a way they have not been since the Civil War. Donald Trump is running a campaign of resentment, revenge, and retribution that threatens the very idea of America.”
Heading into Tuesday, Biden had an estimated 1,866 delegates out of the 1,968 needed to clinch the Democratic nomination. There were 254 delegates at stake in the March 12 Democratic contests, and Biden won all six of the delegates from the Northern Mariana Islands Tuesday morning.
For Trump, there were 161 up for grabs in the March 12 Republican contests. He won contests tonight in Georgia, Mississippi and Washington.
Tuesday’s presidential contests span six time zones and both parties allocate delegates allocated both statewide and by congressional district-level votes, so it may take a little while to have enough votes counted for news outlets to project winners to put Biden and Trump over the top.
Georgia’s polls closed at 7 p.m. ET, Mississippi’s closed at 8 p.m. ET, with Washington closed at 11 p.m. ET and the Hawaii GOP caucus concluding at 2 a.m. ET. Wednesday.
For the Republican contest, the share of non-Trump votes and the speed at which they are reported could push his securing the nomination into Wednesday — or next week.
Mississippi has 40 delegates, Washington has 43 and Hawaii awards 19 delegates to the GOP convention. There are 59 Republican delegates at stake in Georgia, a state where he faces criminal charges for a failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election and other obstacles to winning in November.
Georgia allocates 42 of its delegates to the winner of each of its 14 congressional districts, three Republican National Committee delegates to the statewide winner and the rest proportionally to candidates who earn more than 20 percent of the vote.
Despite dropping out of the race last week, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is still on ballots and could pick up Georgia delegates both statewide and in some suburban Atlanta congressional districts, meaning Trump would not officially win the nomination until the results of the Washington primary are released late Tuesday or Hawaii caucus are reported Wednesday morning.
It's also possible Haley could win enough delegates Tuesday across all the contests to deny Trump an official victory until next week’s elections.
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