Donald Trump has won the Republican presidential nominating contests in Virginia and North Carolina, as he seeks to force rival Nikki Haley from the race on the biggest voting day of the primary calendar and set up a rematch with Democratic President Joe Biden.
Voters in 15 states and one US territory were casting ballots for president on Super Tuesday, with polls scheduled to close throughout the evening until Alaska wraps up the day at midnight.
Immigration and the economy are leading concerns for voters in both parties, Edison exit polls in California, North Carolina and Virginia showed. A majority of Republican voters in those states said they backed deporting illegal immigrants; Trump, who frequently denigrates migrants, has promised to mount the largest deportation effort in US history if elected.
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Biden was expected to sail through the Democratic contests, though activists opposed to his strong support of Israel called on Muslim Americans and progressives to cast “uncommitted” protest votes in Minnesota as they did before in Michigan.
The president easily won in Iowa, North Carolina and Virginia, Edison projected.
Trump, who has dominated the Republican campaign from the start despite a litany of criminal charges, has swept all but one of the contests so far, winnowing a sprawling Republican field of candidates down to two.
While Trump cannot win enough delegates to formally clinch the nomination on Tuesday, another commanding performance would further pressure Haley, a former United Nations ambassador under Trump and a former South Carolina governor, to drop her long-shot bid.
The day’s contests will award more than one-third of Republican delegates – and more than 70 per cent of the number needed to secure the nomination.
Trump told Fox that his focus was on Biden, adding: “We’re going to win every state tonight.”
His advisers have said they expect him to eliminate Haley mathematically no later than March 19, when two-thirds of the states will have voted. Trump is scheduled to begin his first criminal trial six days later in New York, where he is charged with falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to a porn star during his 2016 presidential run.
Biden said the elections were a chance to take on “the extreme division and violence the MAGA Republicans are pushing,” using the acronym for Trump’s Make America Great Again campaign slogan.
Haley’s challenge has highlighted some of Trump’s potential general election vulnerabilities. She has reached 40 per cent in some state contests and argues that shows independents and moderate Republicans harbour unease about a second Trump term.
About one-third of North Carolina voters said Trump would not be fit to serve as president if he was convicted of a crime, while in Virginia, 53 per cent said he would be fit for the office if convicted.
In addition to the New York case, Trump faces separate federal and Georgia state charges for election interference, though it is unclear whether either case will reach trial before November’s election. He also faces federal charges for retaining classified documents after leaving office.
Trump has pleaded not guilty in every case and claimed without evidence that they are part of a Democratic conspiracy to prevent him from returning to power, leveraging his legal troubles to raise money and maintain supporters.
The US Supreme Court on Monday ruled that states cannot remove Trump from their ballots based on a US constitutional amendment barring insurrectionists from holding office.
