A beginner’s guide to Super Tuesday 2024

Super Tuesday, the biggest day of the US presidential primary season, arrives on 5 March and promises to have a decisive – if perhaps somewhat anticlimactic – impact on the respective Republican and Democratic races.

As it stands, Donald Trump looks all but certain to be the Republican party’s presidential candidate once again in 2024, having already chalked up big wins in the Iowa, US Virgin Islands and North Dakota caucuses and the New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, Michigan, Idaho and Missouri primaries.

All but one of his challengers has long since fallen away, leaving only the well-funded but under-performing ex-UN ambassador Nikki Haley still swinging.

She picked up a much-needed win in Washington DC’s primary on Sunday, her first of the season, beating Mr Trump by 62.3 per cent of the vote to his 33.3 per cent, scooping up 19 delegates in the process.

That results breathes some welcome new life into her campaign just in time for Super Tuesday after she suffered the humiliation of scoring fewer votes than the “none of these candidates” box on Nevada ballot papers and then lost in her own home state of South Carolina.

Her win also means we could now find ourselves with a more interesting evening indeed on Tuesday once the results begin to come rolling in.

The Democratic contest is meanwhile even more one-sided, with President Joe Biden seemingly nailed-on to be his party’s candidate again as he seeks a second term in the White House, despite concerns about his advanced age and consistently poor polling.

Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips and the self-help guru Marianne Williamson (who suspended her campaign only to then revive it) remain the president’s last remaining rivals and both are surely too low-profile