Biden and Trump secure more wins as primary voters urge them to keep up fight

Joe Biden and Donald Trump have moved closer to a November rematch, with primary voters around the country urging their favoured candidate to keep up the fight.

There was little suspense about Tuesday’s results as both candidates are already their parties’ presumptive nominees.

Mr Trump easily won Republican primaries in Florida, Illinois, Kansas and Ohio. Mr Biden did the same except in Florida, where Democrats had cancelled their primary and opted to award all 224 of their delegates to Mr Biden. They were expected to sweep Arizona’s primaries as well.

Instead, the primaries and key downballot races became a reflection of the national political mood.

With many Americans unenthusiastic about 2024’s choice for the White House, both Mr Biden and Mr Trump’s campaigns are working to fire up their bases by tearing into each other and warning of the perils of the opponent.

Those who did turn out to vote on Tuesday seemed to hear that.

Pat Shackleford, an 84-year-old caregiver in Mesa, Arizona, said she voted for Mr Trump in Arizona’s primary to send the former president a message.

“I wanted to encourage him that the fight has been worthwhile, that more of us are behind him than maybe the media tells you,” Ms Shackleford said.

Jamie and Cassandra Neal, sisters who both live in Phoenix, said they were unenthusiastic Biden supporters until they saw the vigour the president brought to his State of the Union speech. It fired them up for the coming election.

“Beforehand it was like, ‘Well, he’s the only decent one there,’” said Cassandra Neal, 42. “After his address it was like, ‘OK, let’s do it!’”

Jamie Neal, 45, said Mr Biden had been “way too nice” before and needed to match Mr Trump, whom she described as “vicious”.

“I hate to say it, sometimes you need to equal the lowness to get the person out,” she said. “Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.”

In Ohio’s Republican Senate primary, Trump-backed businessman Bernie Moreno defeated two challengers, Ohio secretary of state Frank LaRose and Matt Dolan, whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians baseball team.

Mr Moreno and Mr Trump appeared together on Saturday at a rally where Mr Trump praised his endorsed candidate as a “warrior” and ramped up his dark rhetoric, saying that were he not to be elected, “it’s going to be a bloodbath for the country”. His campaign insists he was referring to the auto industry and not the country as a whole.

Elsewhere, Chicago voters were deciding whether to assess a one-time real estate tax to pay for new homeless services. And voters in California were moving toward deciding a replacement for former House speaker Kevin McCarthy, who resigned his seat after being pushed out of Republican leadership.

Mr Trump and Mr Biden have for weeks been focused on the general election, aiming their campaigns lately on states that could be competitive in November rather than merely those holding primaries.

Mr Trump, a Florida voter, cast his ballot at a recreation centre in Palm Beach on Tuesday and told reporters: “I voted for Donald Trump.”

Each man is running on his record in office and casting the other as a threat to America.

Mr Trump, 77, portrays the 81-year-old Mr Biden as mentally unfit.

The president has described his Republican rival as a threat to democracy after his attempt to overturn the 2020 election results and his praise of foreign strongmen.

Those themes were evident on Tuesday at some polling locations.

“President Biden, I don’t think he knows how to tie his shoes anymore,” said Trump supporter Linda Bennet, a resident of Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, not far from the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

Even as she echoed Mr Trump’s arguments about Mr Biden, she criticised Mr Trump’s rhetoric and “the way he composes himself” as “not presidential at all”.

But she said the former president is “a man of his word”, and she said the country, especially the economy, felt stronger to her under Mr Trump’s leadership.

In Columbus, Ohio, Democrat Brenda Woodfolk voted for Mr Biden and shared the president’s framing of the choice this fall.

“It’s scary,” she said of the prospect that Mr Trump could be in the Oval Office again.

“Trump wants to be a dictator, talking about making America white again and all this kind of crap. There’s too much hate going on.”

Both women agreed that immigration in one of their top concerns, though they offered different takes on why.

“This border thing is out of control,” said Ms Bennet, the Republican voter.

“I think it’s the government’s plot or plan to bring these people in to change the whole dynamic for their benefit, so I’m pretty peeved.”

Ms Woodfolk, the Democrat, said she does not mind immigrants “sharing” opportunities in the US but worried it comes at the expense of “people who’ve been here all their lives”.

Mr Trump and Republicans have hammered Mr Biden on the influx of migrants crossing the US-Mexico border in recent years, seeking to capitalise on the issue well beyond border states.

Mr Biden has ratcheted up a counteroffensive in recent weeks after Senate Republicans killed a migration compromise they had negotiated with the White House, withholding their support only after Mr Trump said he opposed the deal.

Mr Biden has used the circumstances to argue that Mr Trump and Republicans have no interest in solving the issue but instead want to inflame voters in an election year.