Millions of Americans are voting on Tuesday on “Super Tuesday”, the big election day during which Donald Trump wants to be enthroned as the undisputed champion of the Republicans, definitively dismiss his rival Nikki Haley and devote himself to his duel with Joe Biden.
However, the suspense is not there as the septuagenarian Republican and the octogenarian Democrat are almost going it alone, each in their party, for this primary process.
Polls are taking place in 15 states, from Maine to California, from Texas to Virginia or from Alaska to Alabama.
In front of a polling station set up at the municipal library in Huntington Beach, a conservative bastion in California, most of the Republican voters encountered by AFP support Donald Trump, 77 years old.
Many do not see the need to continue the primaries after this Tuesday when Nikki Haley, 52, seems destined for defeat, according to the polls. Mme Haley is a “lost cause,” says Andrew Pugel, a 57-year-old physics engineer. “Overall it’s her last day” as a candidate, he predicts.
On the Democratic side, Joe Biden, 81, is a candidate for re-election and faces no serious opposition.
Pop superstar Taylor Swift, whose potential influence on young American voters is highly scrutinized before the next presidential election, called on her fans to vote on “Super Tuesday”, without giving any partisan instructions.
Deaf ears
Since January 15 and despite his legal troubles, Donald Trump, 77, has won almost all the primaries organized by his party.
“I think Trump will win nationally anyway,” said Richard Peterson, 72, in Quincy, Massachusetts, on Tuesday before voting in favor of the Republican tribune.
Nikki Haley, former ambassador to the UN, poses herself as the answer to Republican Party voters who intend to restore “normality” in the face of “Trump’s chaos”.
“I can no longer in conscience vote again” for the real estate mogul, said Sarah, 64, explaining that she chose Donald Trump in the past. Mme Haley, 52, is according to her “the right person to unite us”.
But most Republican voters turned a deaf ear to the fifty-year-old’s plea. Jason Miller, advisor to the ex-businessman turned president, said he expected “victories, lots of victories” on Tuesday evening.
Will Haley hang on?
Apart from a symbolic victory on Sunday evening in the capital Washington, Nikki Haley has had a series of bitter defeats, including in the state of which she was governor, South Carolina.
Will she stay in the race if the bad news continues to fall?
Pressed on the question, the main interested party remains vague. “We’re going to continue through Super Tuesday,” she told reporters in late February. “I didn’t think any further in terms of strategy. »
The primaries can in theory stretch until July. But Donald Trump’s team is planning a victory “on March 19” at the latest, after votes notably in Georgia and Florida.
Biden facing the Americans on Thursday
The billionaire wants to be able to focus on his rematch with President Biden as soon as possible, before being sucked into his legal troubles. His first criminal trial begins March 25 in New York.
Joe Biden is on the verge of being a candidate for re-election.
He is attacked on his age but Charles Reid Sales, 93 years old, does not care. “I didn’t expect to vote today but I did,” he said in Houston, Texas. “Biden? He will never be too old! “.
The candidacies of two Democrats launched in pursuit of him, the elected representative of Minnesota Dean Phillips and the best-selling author Marianne Williamson, have never really aroused enthusiasm, despite recurring criticism of the president’s age or his support for Israel.
Tuesday’s elections are therefore at most a formality for Joe Biden. The leader will, however, defend his record and unfold his vision for America on Thursday during a major general policy speech to Congress, the traditional “State of the Union”.
Struggling in the polls, the outgoing president “must use this last opportunity to address millions of Americans to present the contrast between his vision and what life will be like under Donald Trump,” says political scientist Wendy Schiller.