Biden and Trump barrel into Super Tuesday, toward a likely November rematch despite voter concerns

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are poised to move much closer to winning their parties nominations Tuesday during the biggest day of the primary campaign, despite many voters preferring something other than a November rematch from four years ago.

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are poised to move much closer to winning their parties' nominations Tuesday during the biggest day of the primary campaign, despite many voters preferring something other than a November rematch from four years ago. Super Tuesday elections are being held in 16 states and one territory — from Alaska and California to Vermont and Virginia. Hundreds of delegates are at stake, the biggest haul for either party on any single day.

Biden started off the night by winning Iowa. The state held its caucuses in January but didn't release presidential results until Super Tuesday to comply with new Democratic National Committee rules that reordered the early primary calendar and led off with South Carolina to better empower people of color.

While much of the focus is on the presidential race, there are also important down-ballot contests. California voters will choose candidates who will compete to fill the Senate seat long held by Dianne Feinstein. The governor's race will take shape in North Carolina, a state that both parties are fiercely contesting ahead of November. And in Los Angeles, a progressive prosecutor is attempting to fend off an intense reelection challenge in a contest that could serve as a barometer of the politics of crime.

The spotlight, however, remains on the 81-year-old Biden and the 77-year-old Trump, who continue to dominate their parties despite both facing questions about their age and neither commanding broad popularity across the general electorate. The earliest either can become his party's presumptive nominee is March 12 for Trump and March 19 for Biden. But in a departure from most previous Super Tuesdays, both nominations are effectively settled, with Biden and Trump both looking ahead to a reprise of the 2020 general election. "We have to beat Biden — he is the worst president in history," Trump said Tuesday on "Fox & Friends." Biden countered with a pair of radio interviews aimed at shoring up his support among Black voters, who helped anchor his 2020 coalition.

"If we lose this election, you're going to be back with Donald Trump," Biden said on the "DeDe in the Morning" show hosted by DeDe McGuire. "The way he talks about, the way he acted, the way he has dealt with the African American community, I think, has been shameful." Despite Biden's and Trump's domination of their parties, polls make it clear that the broader electorate does not want this year's general election to be identical to the 2020 race. A new AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll finds a majority of Americans don't think either Biden or Trump has the necessary mental acuity for the job.

"Both of them failed, in my opinion, to unify this country," said Brian Hadley, 66, of Raleigh, North Carolina.

The final days before Tuesday demonstrated the unique nature of this year's campaign. Rather than barnstorming the states holding primaries, Biden and Trump held rival events last week along the U.S.-Mexico border, each seeking to gain an advantage in the increasingly fraught immigration debate.

After the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 on Monday to restore Trump to primary ballots following attempts to ban him for his role in helping spark the Capitol riot, Trump pointed to the 91 criminal counts against him to accuse Biden of weaponizing the courts. "Fight your fight yourself," Trump said. "Don't use prosecutors and judges to go after your opponent." Biden delivers the State of the Union address Thursday, then will campaign in the key swing states of Pennsylvania and Georgia.

The president will defend policies responsible for ''record job creation, the strongest economy in the world, increased wages and household wealth, and lower prescription drug and energy costs," White House communications director Ben LaBolt said in a statement. LaBolt also drew a contrast to Trump's priorities that he described as "rewarding billionaires and corporations with tax breaks, taking away rights and freedoms, and undermining our democracy." Biden's campaign called attention to Trump's most provocative statements that evoked Adolf Hitler by declaring that immigrants are "poisoning the blood" of the U.S. and suggesting flippantly that he would serve as a dictator on his first day back in the White House. Trump recently told a gala for Black conservatives that he believed African Americans empathized with his four criminal indictments. That drew another rebuke from Democrats around the country for comparing personal legal struggles to the historical injustices Black people have faced in the U.S.

The former president has nonetheless already vanquished more than a dozen major Republican challengers and now has only one left: Nikki Haley, the former president's onetime U.N. ambassador who was also twice elected governor of her home state of South Carolina. "We can do better than two 80-year-old candidates for president," Haley said at a rally Monday in the Houston suburbs.

Haley has maintained strong fundraising and notched her first primary victory over the weekend in Washington, D.C., a Democrat-run city with few registered Republicans. Trump scoffed that Haley had been "crowned queen of the swamp." Trump's victories, however dominating, have shown vulnerabilities with influential voter blocs, especially in college towns like Hanover, New Hampshire, home to Dartmouth College, or Ann Arbor, where the University of Michigan is located, as well as areas with high concentrations of independents. That includes Minnesota, a state Trump did not carry in his otherwise overwhelming Super Tuesday performance in 2016.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)