(UnitedVoice.com) – Super Tuesday has come and gone. Former President Donald Trump officially became the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party. On the Democratic side, President Joe Biden suffered his first defeat of the 2024 election season.
On Super Tuesday, there were 16 Democratic primaries and caucuses. Biden won 15 of them but lost the caucus in American Samoa, a US territory with six delegates. Out of 91 ballots cast, an unknown candidate, Jason Palmer, won 51. Biden took the other 40 votes.
The Associated Press reported Palmer said that he learned that he won because his “phone started blowing up with friends and campaign staffers” reaching out to him. The 52-year-old, who lives in Baltimore, said that he has never even been to the American territory. He ran his campaign over the Internet. He used Zoom to host town halls and to speak to voters.
Palmer loaned his campaign more than half a million dollars of his own money. He said that he believes voters want a candidate “who is more of the 21st century than Joe Biden.” As for all of the money he spent on the race, he simply explained he can’t bring it with him when he dies, but he “can change the world while” he’s here.
President Biden lost in American Samoa in the 2020 caucus as well. Then-Democratic candidate Michael Bloomberg won it with 49.9% of the votes. Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) received 29.3% of the vote, coming in second. Then it was Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) with 10.5%, and, finally, Biden with 8.8%. One other notable difference was the voter turnout in 2020; 375 people cast their votes that year. That’s more than three times the number that voted this year.
In the days that followed Super Tuesday, one of Biden’s other rivals, Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN), bowed out of the Democratic primary. Like Trump, Biden is the presumptive nominee for the party, which is entirely unsurprising since he is the incumbent.
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