WASHINGTON – The presidential primary calendar has officially come to an end with weekend victories for Democratic President Joe Biden in Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Biden and Republican Donald Trump already secured their party nominations in Marchsetting up a historic rematch in the general elections between the current and former president.
Many Americans did not want a rematch in 2020, according to public opinion polls, and both Biden and Trump are widely unpopular. But the two lost just three races out of more than 100, a reflection of how the Democratic and Republican bases supported Biden and Trump despite both facing significant political challenges — and in Trump’s case, four criminal charges, one of which led to to criminal convictions.
Both Biden and Trump faced protest votes. While these votes didn’t come close to changing the primary results, they offer insight into the November general election rematch and are already shaping both campaigns’ strategies against each other.
Biden won the Democratic caucuses in Guam and the Virgin Islands on Saturday. He received 467 of the 469 votes cast at the Virgin Islands conventions, earning him all seven delegates at stake. Self-help author Marianne Williamson and “Uncommitted” each received one vote, according to local Democratic Party officials.
Earlier in the day, the president also swept all seven available delegates from Guam. Voters did not vote directly for presidential candidates, but rather elected individuals to serve as national convention delegates, all of whom were committed to supporting Biden.
The contests marked Biden’s 53rd and 54th victories in the primary campaign. His only defeat came at the hands of a relatively unknown candidate Jason Palmer at the American Samoa conventions, where only 91 votes were cast.
Biden’s journey to regain the Democratic nomination began in 2022 when he proposed surpassing Iowa and New Hampshire of its traditional first-in-the-nation voting spots in favor of South Carolina, which played a key role in reviving your 2020 campaign. The Democratic National Committee adopted the new planbut New Hampshire refused the demotion and scheduled its primary for 11 days before South Carolina. Biden then opted to skip the New Hampshire primary, rather than violating the new party rules he defended. Instead, his supporters in the state set up a successful written campaign in his name, sparing the incumbent president the possible embarrassment of starting the year with a defeat in a competition in which he was banned from competing.
After Robert F. Kennedy Jr. abandoned his short-lived Democratic primary campaign In favor of a third-party candidacy in the general election, Biden did not face major primary challenges from Williamson, Palmer, U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips or any other group of Democrats appearing on the ballot across the country.
The Republican presidential primary season ended on June 4, when local parties in Guam and the Virgin Islands held their Republican events earlier in the year. Trump prevailed in all but two races in 2024 — the primaries in Washington, D.C., and Vermont, both for former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley.
Trump began his campaign to return to the White House in mid-November 2022, when many Republicans blamed him for the party’s poor performance in the midterm elections a few days earlier. Since then, Republican voters have largely joined the former president after his accusations in four federal and state criminal investigationswith most of his rivals for the presidential nomination reluctant to criticize him for much of the year.
In January, he marked his first big victory in the Iowa caucuseswho remained first in the Republican Party hierarchy, followed by another in the New Hampshire Primary, where Haley hoped moderate Republicans and independents would lead her to an upset victory. Trump also won a symbolic victory in a non-binding primary “beauty contest” in Nevada, where he did not appear on the ballot, but his supporters supported the “None of these candidates” voting option over Haley.
Haley was Trump’s last major primary challenger remaining when She suspended her campaign after a disappointing showing on Super Tuesday. Others who ran against Trump included Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, U.S. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy and Mike Pence, the former vice president.
Biden’s main rival in the primaries came in the form of organized campaigns in several states to vote for “Uncompromised” to protest his support for Israel in the Israel-Hamas War.
In 24 states and Washington, D.C., variations of “Uncommitted” received more than 793,000 votes. In terms of raw votes, the campaign reached its maximum limit in Michigan with nearly 102,000 voters choosing that option. The largest share of “Uncommitted” votes received was in Hawaii, at 29%, although it represented only 463 votes cast. The campaign persisted until the end of the calendar, with “Descompromised” receiving between 8% and 10% of the votes in the last four Democratic presidential primaries of the year in which he appeared on the ballot.
After becoming the presumptive nominee, Trump faced an apparent protest vote in the form of votes for Haley. In the 21 races held since Haley dropped out of the race, she still received more than 1.3 million votes. She received more than 20% of the vote as a non-candidate in Maryland and Indiana and more than 15% of the vote in Washington state, Nebraska, Arizona, Pennsylvania and Kansas. Additionally, just under 49,000 voters in seven states voted some form of “Uncommitted.”
An immediate takeaway from these primary protest votes is that both campaigns have now begun efforts to try to attract voters dissatisfied with the other candidate and bring them into the fold. The Trump campaign, for example, made appeals to Arab Americans in Michigan, while Biden’s campaign is launching an effort to reach moderate Republicans.
