Trump, Biden clinch enough delegates for US presidential nomination
Supporters of Republican presidential candidate, former US President Donald Trump, including one holding a sign reading "Say Her Name Laken Riley," gather outside a campaign stop by US President Joe Biden in Goffstown, New Hampshire, US, on March 11, 2024.
Joe Biden and rival Donald Trump each won enough delegates on Tuesday to clinch their party nominations in the 2024 presidential race, networks projected, all but assuring a rematch and setting up one of the longest election campaigns in US history.
The results in four statewide elections Tuesday, the latest in the monthslong march to determine the Democratic and Republican party flagbearers, were essentially a foregone conclusion as incumbent Biden and former President Trump had already seen off all primary challengers.
Biden crossed the threshold of 1,968 delegates needed when he won Georgia — a US swing state where Trump faces trial over an alleged conspiracy to steal the last election.
Trump's victory in Washington helped him secure the 1,215 delegates needed to earn the Republican nomination — and to propel him and his Make America Great Again movement back into the cauldron of a presidential race.
As the pair now head for a rematch of their 2020 showdown, Biden laid into his challenger in a statement.
"I am honored that the broad coalition of voters representing the rich diversity of the Democratic Party across the country has put their faith in me once again to lead our party — and our country — in a moment when the threat Trump poses is greater than ever," Biden said.
Georgia, Mississippi, Washington and Hawaii — the Pacific island state where polls were to close hours later on Tuesday — were offering a combined 161 delegates on the Republican side, and unopposed Trump needed 137 of those to put the race mathematically beyond reach.
Trump's remarkable sweep of nearly all GOP state primaries to date led him to essentially secure the nomination far earlier than most candidates in previous campaigns, and it assures an extremely lengthy, nearly eight-month slog for the White House being contested by the two oldest men ever to begin their presidencies.
Trump is campaigning on sweeping reform of what he calls Biden's "horror show" immigration policies, despite successfully pressuring Republicans to block the toughest package of border security negotiated in Congress for decades.
The issue has become a flashpoint in Georgia — which was long reliably Republican but has become more competitive and is now seen as crucial to any candidate's White House ambitions — due to the recent murder of nursing student Laken Riley, allegedly by an undocumented migrant.
