Donald Trump cements his lead in phenomenal Super Tuesday sweep

For Donald Trump, Super Tuesday was always going to be about the scale of his victory.

Nobody – including, surely, Nikki Haley herself – believed the former governor of South Carolina had a chance of seriously denting the ex-president’s momentum. It was always going be to be about whether she could narrow the gap and pull off any upsets.

For Trump, the question was whether he won in a landslide or simply with ease. In the end it was a rout – unprecedented in US politics for a contested primary.

While full results from the 15 states and one US territory that voted are still not complete – the biggest prize is California with 169 delegates followed by Texas with 150 – it is clear Super Tuesday will go down as the day Trump proved he was unstoppable.

On the east coast, the state of North Carolina, which carries 74 delegates, was called by Reuters and CNN for Trump immediately after the polls closed.

In Virginia, one of the places where Haley had hoped to stage a surprise, the Associated Press needed just minutes to call the race for the former president.

As it was the sole state where Haley was putting up a fight was independent-minded Vermont where it was too close to call.

In other east coast states such as Maine, and Massachusetts, whose senator Susan Collins last week backed Haley in one of her of her few big name Republican endorsements, she also lost.

As the electoral map moved further west – to red states of Alabama, Oklahoma and Tennessee – the former president continued to chalk up victories.

As soon as polls closed in Texas at 8pm local time, the AP called the race for the former president, another huge prize.

Haley had said going into Super Tuesday the future of her campaign did not depend on how well she performed on this famed day in the electoral calendar when 15 states and one territory from Alaska to Virginia cast their votes and up to a third of delegates are up for grabs.

“As long as we are competitive, as long as we are showing that there is a place for us, I’m going to continue to fight,” she had told NBC News.

While it’s true she probably has the money to fight on for a few more showdowns, at some point by her own definition she will have passed the point of having a mathematical path to victory.

On Tuesday night there was no word from Haley, 52, as the results continued to pour in against her.

In theory she could have continue to add to her delegate count drip by drip to try and have some sort of leverage at the summer convention perhaps to press for a policy to be included in the party platform.

But this is not the Republican Party that Haley embraced when she first ran for and won a seat in the South Carolina state legislature in 2004, in a move that kicked off her political career.

It is not even the same party it was when she served as Trump’s UN Ambassador. Rather the GOP now belongs entirely to Trump, and any policies it agrees to will be those he wants.

Even if something were to happen to Trump before the convention, it seems inconceivable the MAGA-drinking delegates would select an establishment figure as their candidate. Vivek Ramaswamy or Kristi Noem or Tim Scott or Ted Cruz perhaps. Not Nikki Haley, who has said Trump has by his words and actions shown himself “not qualified” to be president again.

Anyone needing proof of that need look no further than the exit polls out of North Carolina on Tuesday afternoon that showed 65 per cent of voters said they’d consider Trump fit for the presidency even if convicted of one of the 91 criminal charges he faces.

Polls going into Super Tuesday showed Trump winning easily in all of the states involved in the biggest election day so far. In California he had a lead of 58 points. Haley has won just one primary heading into the day, that of Washington DC where Republican voters tend to be establishment types and not reflective of the party as a whole.

Her delegate haul was just 43 compared to Trump’s 273, with a target of 1,215 to secure the nomination.

For Democrats, Joe Biden had an easy night, sweeping to victory by large margins in each of the states contested. His challengers, author Marianne Williamson and congressman Dean Phillips, scored only in low single digits.

But for something extraordinary, America will see a rematch between Biden, 81, and Trump, 77, this November, two men who very clearly have little but loathing for each other.

“We have to beat Biden — he is the worst president in history,” Trump told Fox News on Tuesday.

Biden has been equally blunt. Last month he told a fundraiser: “There is one existential threat – it’s Donald Trump,”