Super Tuesday: America's multi-state voting bonanza and why it matters
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00:00 more about all of this with Angela Diffley who joins me on the set. Angela, first of all, let's start with the basics.
00:03 Why do we call it Super Tuesday?
00:05 It's because it's the day with the biggest number of primary votes today.
00:10 So 15 states from Alaska right across to Maine, also an American territory, American Samoa, which is in the South Pacific.
00:20 And we will get also the result from the Iowa caucus on the Democrat side.
00:25 They are not voting in Alaska, the Democrats.
00:29 So how it works is basically, for example, in California, which is the biggest, has the highest number of delegates in those states voting today.
00:41 If, for example, Donald Trump wins the most votes in the state of California, then he will win all 169 delegates because California,
00:52 as the biggest, has 169 delegates. They will vote for him and he has to reach a threshold of 1,215 delegates to win that nomination.
01:07 The same sort of thing works on the Democrat side where there is little opposition.
01:12 They also have primaries today for all the House seats, for the House of Representatives and a third of the Senate seats also.
01:21 There are primaries for those today as well.
01:22 Right. So a lot of focus, obviously, on how Donald Trump is going to do.
01:26 But there is another Republican who is still in the race.
01:28 That's former UN ambassador Nikki Haley.
01:30 Yes. So on the Republic, well, let's, Biden is going to win.
01:36 There's virtually no one challenging him.
01:38 He will win. And then, of course, he will look at the, people will be concentrating on where his weaknesses are for the wider election in November.
01:49 Broadly, at the moment, they are still the same age, mental acuity.
01:53 Immigration is seen as a weakness for the Democrats.
01:56 And he, although the economy holds up very well by comparison to world economies, Americans aren't really feeling that way.
02:03 So they will be his issues. Trump isn't quite there yet.
02:08 He is widely expected to come out of all these primaries extremely well.
02:13 So he will undoubtedly win all of them.
02:15 Then we have Nikki Haley, who has a choice.
02:18 She might just simply exit.
02:20 And we will wait to hear what she says about Donald Trump.
02:23 She might decide to continue.
02:27 And that will depend very much on whether she continues to receive backing from donors.
02:33 She is hoping perhaps that there might be some dramatic legal development, perhaps, which would disqualify Trump.
02:40 And she might be an emergency candidate. Or she might run as an independent.
02:46 It looks very likely that whatever of those happens, Trump will get the nomination.
02:52 And then his biggest weakness so far is women who, with the rulings on abortion and IVF clinics, are not keen on Trump poll show.
03:03 It will be interesting to see how that plays out and what effect that has.
03:06 Just to wrap up, Angela, yesterday there was a decision from the US Supreme Court that means now no state,
03:11 this was about the state of Colorado, but no state can ban Trump from the ballot.
03:15 And this, of course, is good news for Trump. Does this mean the issue is now over?
03:19 Well, it's given rise to an interesting constitutional debate in the US, as you will know, Jeannie,
03:26 because what they ruled yesterday was that no state has the right to ban a candidate.
03:32 Only Congress has the right to disqualify a candidate.
03:36 And so there are voices now being raised saying that's left something rather unclear.
03:42 What if Trump wins the election?
03:45 And when it comes to the official certification of Donald Trump,
03:52 perhaps if the Democrats win the House of Representatives, for example,
03:56 they might decide that he should be disqualified on the grounds that he instigated an insurrection, they might decide.
04:04 And that meeting would actually take place on January the 6th, which is exactly the day when the insurrection happened.
04:10 And the point of the insurrection was to prevent the certification of Joe Biden the first time around.
04:14 So there's a bit of a debate going on. I think all of these steps are very unlikely.
04:18 But we've seen so many very unlikely things happening in recent US politics.
04:24 Who knows? We certainly have, Angela. Thank you so much for that.
04:27 That's France 24's Angela Diffley.