ATLANTA – Georgia’s Democratic Primary voters put President Joe Biden over the top Tuesday, giving him enough delegates to win renomination when Democrats hold their convention this summer in Chicago.
Former President Donald Trump also won big in Georgia but was still short of the delegate total needed to capture the Republican nomination. Trump was expected to clinch the nod later Tuesday night after GOP voters in Mississippi and Washington state cast their primary ballots.
With 65% of precincts reporting as of 10 p.m., Biden had racked up more than 95% of the vote. Author Marianne Williamson lagged far behind with 2.8% of the vote, and U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., was last at less than 2%.
On the Republican side, Trump had won more than 84% of the vote in a field that was still crowded, although every other GOP candidate had dropped out of the race. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley – the last also-ran to end her candidacy – was second with less than 14% of the vote.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had captured just 1% of the vote, while the other eight Republicans on the primary ballot were being held below 1%.
The end of the primary season sets up the first repeat matchup of presidential candidates since 1956, when Republican President Dwight Eisenhower won reelection by defeating Democrat Adlai Stevenson for the second consecutive time.
The last time a former president ran for the White House was in 1912 when Theodore Roosevelt mounted an unsuccessful third-party candidacy against incumbent Republican William Howard Taft and Democrat Woodrow Wilson, with Wilson winning the White House.
Democratic former President Grover Cleveland ousted Republican President Benjamin Harrison in 1892, the last time in U.S. history that an ex-president challenged an incumbent president.
With the outcomes in Tuesday’s primaries clear ahead of time, voter turnout in Georgia was low. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Tuesday afternoon that he expected only about 10% of the state’s registered voters would head to the polls.