US election live: Candidates prep for Nevada with Haley and Trump to appear on separate ballots – 2024 updates

The president unsurprisingly won the South Carolina Democratic primary on Saturday, taking a majority of the votes and delegates in the Democratic Party’s first official primary of the 2024 election season.

Biden was running against two lesser-known candidates: Minnesota representative Dean Phillips and self-help author Marianne Williamson, neither of whom have been given much media attention or appear to stand any realistic chance of making a mark on his bid for a second term in the White House.

Here’s more from Ariana Baio.

At this point, it’s quite hard for people to change their opinions on either Trump or Biden. Both have been in the public eye for a long time. Trump has been running for president for more than eight years now, and Biden for five.

Biden being the incumbent when most people feel the state of the country is lousy, if improving, puts him at a significant disadvantage. Meanwhile, Trump’s biggest advantage is that people will look upon the pre-Covid economy over which he presided and wish for that, despite the concerns around his erratic behaviour, his pronouncements of authoritarian wishes and dwindling abortion rights. Biden hopes that the economy that he is selling with higher wages and better jobs — alongside a sturdy democracy and protecting women’s rights — will be enough for people to look past the rising prices of the past few years.

But just because voters have accepted their fate does not mean they will gleefully waltz to the polls. After all, grieving is never that straightforward.

There are still some flashing red lights for Biden in the recent Quinnipiac poll — namely that Trump slightly leads among Hispanic voters.

Two additional polls show that Biden is in trouble. Morning Consult found that Biden trails Trump in seven swing states — Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Georgia — with Trump having an eight-point lead in Nevada, a state Biden won last time around. Trump also holds a three-point lead in Biden’s home state of Pennsylvania and, despite the case in Fulton County, an eight-point lead in Georgia.

Similarly, CNN released a poll showing that Trump holds a four-point lead, showing the spread is the same as it was in December. It showed 34 per cent of Americans have a favourable opinion of Biden while 39 per cent have a favourable opinion of Trump. While that might help the former president, it’s not exactly a ringing endorsement.

On Friday afternoon, the judge overseeing Donald Trump’s federal election conspiracy case made it official: his trial date is no more, and the court will set a new one at another time.

A forthcoming appeals court decision on whether Mr Trump can claim “immunity” for crimes allegedly committed while in office will likely be appealed by either Mr Trump or special prosecutor Jack Smith up to the US Supreme Court, depending which way the court rules. Another appeal will further delay proceedings in an election year where the Republican Party’s potential nominee for president is facing the prospect of sitting in four courtrooms to face 91 criminal charges.

Earlier this week, Quinnipiac University releasing a poll showing that Biden beats Trump by six points. In particular, Biden shot up among women voters by five points, likely the result of Trump bragging regularly that he nominated the three Supreme Court justices who facilitated the death of Roe v Wade. Increased headlines about him having to pay more than $83 million for defaming E Jean Carroll likely won’t help him. And his habit of regularly insulting Nikki Haley – a Republican that many suburban women could see themselves supporting if she had a snowball’s chance — won’t endear him much to swing voters, either.

Biden also got an unexpected boost on Friday when the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the US economy added 353,000 jobs. That gives him much-needed proof that the economy is generally improving. While many people continue to feel lousy about the economy, signs exist that voters do think it has turned the corner. Biden will need to hammer the message home.

President Joe Biden unsurprisingly won the South Carolina Democratic primary on Saturday, taking a majority of the votes and delegates in the Democratic Party’s first official primary of the 2024 election season.

The Associated Press called the primary in favour of Mr Biden approximately 30 minutes after polls closed at 7pm EST.