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Good morning and welcome to the Daily ODS. It's Thursday, the seventh of March. I'm Zara, I'm emma.
I'm the editor of the Daily ODS.
This week, millions of people in the US voted in their state's primary elections in a day known as Super Tuesday. Super Tuesday is here. Today. People in more than a dozen states will vote in the largest single day voting event of the primary season.
They call it Super Tuesday for a reason.
Super Tuesday is one of the most important days in the US presidential election cycle. But as anyone listening might have worked out, the electoral system in the US is pretty different to how things work here in Australia. So we're going to take you through Super Tuesday, how it all works, and what this sweek's polls actually mean in today's deep dive.
But first, Zara, what's making headlights? Prime Minister Anthony Alberzi has announced two billion dollars in trade and investment funding in Southeast Asia. The funding is designed to support a transition to clean energy in the region and the development of new infrastructure. It comes as the Association of Southeast Asian Nation Summit so Asian came to a close in Melbourne yesterday.
Australia's economy grew zero point two percent from October to December in twenty twenty three, according to new data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. This figure is the growth of the gross domestic product or GDP, which is the total value of all goods and services produced within a country. The Head of National Accounts at the ABS said government spending and private business investments were the main causes of growth during the period.
Peru's Prime Minister, Alberto Otarala has stepped down over an alleged audio leak accusing him of corruption. The audio recording was allegedly of the Prime minister from before his time in office, speaking to a woman about how much he loved her and telling her to send him his CV. The woman was later awarded contracts to carry out government work.
The Prime minister has denied any wrongdoing that announced in a letter to Peru's president that he is formally resigning as prime minister after just over a year in office.
And today's good news, global health donors have announced new funding worth nine hundred and twenty million dollars to eliminate cervical cancer. Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women, and over ninety percent of deaths from cervical
cancer occur in low and middle income countries. The new funding aims to meet a number of targets by twenty thirty, such as vaccinating ninety percent of girls against HPV, a precursor to XIX cervical cancer, by the age of fifteen, and ensuring that women with cervical disease receive the correct treatment. Funding donors include the World Bank, UNISEF, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
ZARA.
One of the biggest tests for US presidential candidates has finally come and gone. Super Tuesday. I feel like we were hearing about this day for a long time, and if you're listening wondering why we're talking about a Tuesday on a Thursday, that has a lot to do with time zones.
I think this is the hardest maths we've ever had to do, truly perplexing.
Voting across more than a dozen US states didn't actually conclude until mid to late in the afternoon for most of us. Here in Australia on Wednesday. That's why Thursday morning we are talking about Super Tuesday.
I want to get to Super Tuesday in just a second. But Super Tuesday is just one element of a vastly different election process in the US. The what we have here in Australia. Can you just give us a bit of a lay of the land. How does it actually work in the US.
So the first thing to say is that there are two major parties in the US. So we have the Republican Party, the traditionally more conservative or right leaning party, and the Democrats with the sort of traditionally more progressive or left leaning values. Joe Biden, the current President of
the US, is a Democrat. So going into a US election, there might be anywhere from one to a handful of hopefuls on both sides who are competing to become their party's official presidential candidate, and that candidate is known as the party's nominee. So when it comes to the lead up to a presidential election, each of the fifty states in the US has its own rules, but most hold
a vote called a primary ballot or primaries. You've probably heard yeah discussed, and this is where voters have their say on who they think should be their party's presidential candidate.
So just to clarify here, we're talking about states going to vote for who the candidate for the major parties should be, not who should actually be president. Yep, exactly.
So if we were in California on Tuesday, we might go to the polls to decide who our favorite Republican candidate was or who our favorite Democrat candidate was. A small number of states hold something called a caucus instead of a primary, and they're run by political parties where registered members can cast their vote at a meeting. They only happen in a few of those fifty states.
So those are primaries. What Super Tuesday then.
So Super Tuesday refers to a day, the first Tuesday of March, when a group of states hold their primaries on the same day, so a bunch of states. We're talking sixteen this year, but that number varies from year to year. It's not the day when the nominees are confirmed, so the Republican nominee, Democrat nominee. It's a day that does, give us, however, a pretty good idea of who will ultimately lead each of the major.
Parties, because there are so many primaries in one day that if you see someone sweeping all of those primaries, it's a pretty clear indication.
Exactly. So the number of primaries varies every election on Super Tuesday, as I said, but this year we had those sixteen primaries all on the same day, hence Super Tuesday.
But it's very literal, Yeah, very literal. It's just super. It's just big sixteen.
Is not a super as it's been before. To give you a sense of how super it can get. Before Obama became president in two thousand and eight, he faced off with Hillary Clinton in twenty four Democrat contests for the nomination for his party. So, okay, twenty four primaries on that Super Tuesday.
Okay, So is there anything behind why Super Tuesday exists? Like why is it on a Tuesday? We vote on a Saturday. Why are they doing on a Tuesday? That feels really inconvenient for everybody involved.
Yep, this is a really good question and one with a pretty interesting answer, a little bit of a strange one. Voting is not compulsory in the US, we should say off the bat, But voting on a Tuesday is actually an American tradition that dates back to the nineteenth century, right.
Get this.
It's because back in the day, Christian farmers needed enough time to travel from their towns and their farms to voting booths in voting centers and cities after Sunday church services. So Tuesday was considered the least inconvenient because it would be like, farmer wakes up, goes to church on Sunday and then they have enough time to get the horse and cart into town to vote on a Tuesday.
Wow, so go Yeah, that's why.
And both the November presidential election and Super Tuesdays fall on the first Tuesday of the month, So the final big US election day moment that will also come on a Tuesday this year.
I am so looking forward to using that fact at a trivia night and never again at any point in my life. It's a good one. Let's bring ourselves back into the twenty first century. What do we need to know about the Super Tuesday results?
So I'm going to focus more on the Republican primaries here because President Joe Biden is expected to be chosen as the Democrat nominee and he has no serious challenges, but Republican voters this week in states like California, Alabama, Virginia, just to name a few, were tasked with choosing between the former US President Donald Trump and his last legitimate challenger, Nicky Hayley, who.
We have spoken about a number of times exactly.
So going into Super Tuesday, they were the remaining two Republican candidates in these primaries. Nicki Haley a quick reminder, the former governor of South Carolina, a former UN ambassador, and despite losing in almost every primary before this week except Washington, where there's I'm sure a joke here about how there are less than five Republicans in the state
of Washington, Hailey had vowed to hang in there. She promised voters that she was going to stick it out to at least Super Tuesday as an alternative to Trump.
South Carolina has spoken, We're the fourth state to do so. In the next ten days, another twenty one states and territories will speak. They have the right to a real choice, not a Soviet style election with only one candidate, and I have a duty to give them that choice.
So, going into Super Tuesday, then this week, Trump was considered the overwhelming favorite, and the results are consistent with that trend. Nikki Haley won in at least the state of Vermont with fifty point one percent of the vote, But it does look like, at least at the time of recording, Trump has won at least a dozen more states in the primaries, and that paid the way for what many have been expecting a twenty twenty presidential election rematch showdown between Biden and Trump.
I don't know if we have the rights to play Beyonce's d but if we did, I would play it right now.
I would sing it right now if I didn't think it would ruin everyone's day exactly.
Good morning, and here's our voices. Okay, So, if Donald Trump is expected to be the Republican nominee, I presume that means that Nicky Haley's presidential hope. So all bit over.
Trump's victories in all of these states, and they are many, doesn't actually officially crown him the Republican nominee. So he hasn't really formally secured that. But what he has secured are lots of delegates, so bear with me. In most cases, you can think of delegates as points. So during a primary election, the candidate will win a certain number of delegates or points, depending on how big the state is.
A state with more people like California will have more delegates up for grabs whoever wins the primary vote, and a small er state like Rhode Island will have fewer delegates up for grabs. So whoever wins the majority of delegates, so again, think of it like points, they will typically become their party's nominee den party's presidential candidate.
Okay.
So, because Nikki Hayley has won barely any primaries, she has barely any.
Delegates, understood, and so Trump would have many delegates hundreds Okay, So if Trump has won that many delegates, it's likely he could win the Republican nomination, But we have to wait for that to be declared officially. Right when does that happen?
Yep? So after Super Tuesday, there will still be a few more primaries to come in the next couple of months, and then both major parties will hold national conventions later in the year where their presidential and vice presidential nominees will be confirmed. So, even if we know that Trump has hundreds and hundreds more delegates than any other challenger.
He has to wait for the big dance, has to wait for the.
Big dance, and that will be for the Republican Party in July in Milwaukee, and the Democratic Convention will be in August in Chicago. Now that's where President Joe Biden is expected to be chosen is his party's candidate for the White House race. And then we can look forward to three months of campaigning, which I'm sure will be mutually respectful and exciting, before the US election on the fifth of November, which as we know, is a Tuesday.
Now, we do know that before we wrap up. It feels like we've been talking about a Biden Trump showdown for a long time. At least it seems like that was what was going to happen. We know both of them can win an election. Both of them have won an election. Do we have any more of a sense of how things might turn out this time?
Yeah. It's a very different world for Donald Trump going into this election than the context that he won the twenty sixteen election, in he defeated Hillary Clinton, she was the Democrat nominee at the time. But since then, you know, we've seen numerous criminal cases brought against him, multiple lawsuits, fraud investigations, and of course the fallout from the January sixth attack on the Capitol in twenty twenty one.
But as chaotic is that.
Might all sound, and as wild as the headlines have been in the years since his presidency, it doesn't really seem to have impacted his popularity with voters.
But nor does it actually impact his ability to run exactly, like, none of these criminal trials will actually make any difference to his chances of being able to run.
And just this week we saw court action that was overturned in the Supreme Court after states like Colorado vowed to remove his name from the election ballot. That decision was overturned in the US's highest court this week. So you're absolutely right that despite those headlines, there hasn't really been any significant obsticle stopping him from running. And if we look at Super Tuesday, you know there were huge swings towards him in some states like Texas and Alabama.
He won around eighty percent of the vote in those primaries.
So it's clear that he has both the popularity to win the Republican nomination but also the ability to run for president. What do we know about how this showdown between Trump and Biden is shaping up. Do we have any indication of I know, it was still a bit far away of who could win in November.
Yeah, I mean, it's funny thinking about the fact that the election is still eight months away.
I can't be long eight months.
Yeah, a long eight months. But it's already been a long year or so since we first started to talk about Trump throwing his hat back in the ring. But in terms of the numbers, four substantial polls in the US this week show that Trump is in front of Biden with leads of between two to four percent. So that's not nothing, but it's not a dundee. That being said, as well, despite Biden being behind in the polls, he
has the advantage of being an incumbent. Now, this is the idea of someone in office seeking re election, and historically what we've seen in the US is when a current president runs for a second term, they're typically more successful than the candidate challenging them. So in the last twelve elections in the US, to put this into perspective, incumbent candidates have won eight times, leaving four one term presidents.
So that's gerald for Jimmy Carter, George Bush Senior, and of course Trump because he failed to win office for a second term when he was an incumbent in that race. So history tells us that Joe Biden has that advantage. Polls tell us that Trump has the popularity advantage. It's going to be a long.
Road ahead that it is a lot could change, but I appreciate you telling us the lay of the land today. Hey, thanks for joining us today on the Daily os. If you learn something from today's episode, don't forget to hit subscribe. So there is a TDA episode waiting for you every weekday morning. We'll be back again tomorrow, but until then, have a fabulous day. My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung Calcotin woman from Gadighl Country.
The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.