Why Super Tuesday Is a ‘Dress Rehearsal’ for the General Election

Kristin Powell vividly remembers watching the Super Tuesday returns in February 2008 and being consumed by a single question: Can he actually make it?

A college student spending a semester in Italy at the time, Powell was referring to Barack Obama, the youthful U.S. senator from Illinois who was challenging the establishment darling Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party nomination. Powell knew that she was enthralled by Obama — but did other Black voters share her excitement?

Quickly, the answer became obvious: Yes. The vast majority of Black voters turned out for Obama on Super Tuesday — the busiest day of the primary calendar — injecting even more energy into his insurgent campaign. By the end of the night, Obama had notched a narrow but meaningful delegate advantage over Clinton and cemented his status as the front-runner. Months later, he’d defeat the Republican Party nominee, John McCain, and become the country’s first Black president.

“Super Tuesday is, really, our dress rehearsal for the general election,” Powell, the deputy director of the Black Futures Lab, a voter mobilization organization, told Capital B.

Given the large number of states that hold contests on Super Tuesday, it illuminates what Black voter enthusiasm looks like and where parties are struggling and need to sharpen their efforts. It also reveals which candidate might clinch the Democratic nomination when there’s legitimate competition, since becoming the party’s standard-bearer hinges on winning big among Black voters.

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“That’s why we’re spending so much time in [Super Tuesday] states such as North Carolina. We can practice our messaging, listen to Black voters, and confirm what their concerns are,” Powell said. “We’re also paying attention to down-ballot races. There’s a governor’s race in North Carolina. We want people to understand the importance of what’s happening beyond the presidential race.”

Cliff Albright, the co-founder of Black Voters Matter, also underscored that Super Tuesday can indicate the current level of engagement among Black voters. The results are litmus tests of what their mood is and how it may have shifted since earlier contests.

While Super Tuesday probably won’t yield any huge surprises this year — that President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump will emerge victorious is essentially a foregone conclusion — let’s take a moment for a refresher on what, exactly, this day is and what some of the most crucial races are.

Read on for more.

What is Super Tuesday?

Super Tuesday is the day during the U.S. presidential primary cycle that the most states hold their caucuses or primaries.

This year, 15 states are voting on March 5: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia. American Samoa, a U.S. territory, also will be voting, and Iowa will report the results of its Democratic caucus.

In the Democratic and Republican primaries, about a third of the total available delegates are at stake on Super Tuesday. This means that the candidates can get a major boost from the day in their quest to earn their respective party’s nomination at the conventions this summer.

“There’s a nice mixture of states: Southern states, Midwestern states, Western states,” Michael Minta, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities who focuses on racial and ethnic politics, told Capital B. “So, Super Tuesday gives us a good snapshot of the country — of what voter preferences are — and is helpful for candidates as they try to accumulate delegates.”

Black voters form a critical share of the Democratic primary electorate. As a result, Super Tuesday can make or break a Democratic candidate’s campaign, depending on their strength among this key voting bloc.

Just ask Biden.

His 2020 bid for the nomination seemed over until he swept the South Carolina contest and then, on Super Tuesday, the South — the region with the most Black voters. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts suspended their campaigns after lackluster performances on Super Tuesday.

The night was yet another reminder that if a candidate wants to win the Democratic nod, they must secure substantial support from Black voters.

Which races is Capital B watching?

More will be on Tuesday’s ballot than just presidential primary races. Many Americans will be voting in various down-ballot contests, too.

“I know that people like to look at the presidential level, but in many of those Southern states, you’re not going to see an impact as [Democratic primaries] relate to the presidential election, because those states are heavily red,” Minta said. “But when it comes to statewide races, these diverse, Democratic-leaning groups can make a difference — especially where there are competitive races.”

Here are just a few of the high-stakes contests we’ll have our eye on:

Alabama: The Yellowhammer State will hold a Republican primary to replace the retiring chief justice on the state Supreme Court — one of the most conservative courts in the U.S. (Recall its ruling in February attacking in vitro fertilization.) Additionally, Alabama will hold U.S. House primaries, including for the new majority-Black district that was drawn after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last June that the state’s congressional map likely violated the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965.

North Carolina: The Tar Heel State will hold primaries to replace term-limited Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. His party hopes to retain the office, which has tried hard to serve as a bulwark against a Republican-controlled state legislature that continues to undermine civil rights. North Carolina is once again becoming a vital battleground, as Biden seeks to flip an increasingly diverse state that Trump won by about 1 percentage point four years ago.

Texas: The Lone Star State will hold a Democratic U.S. House primary for the 18th Congressional District, a seat that Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee has held since 1995. (She lost her 2023 bid for Houston mayor.) Jackson Lee is facing what many view as formidable competition from Amanda Edwards, a former Houston City Council member described as representing the next generation of Black political leadership in Houston.

Arkansas: The Natural State will hold nonpartisan primaries for two different state Supreme Court seats: One is for the chief justice seat, while the other is for Position 2. These races could create vacancies that Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders would then fill. This heightened conservatism would arrive at a moment when Black voting rights in the state and elsewhere in the Eighth Circuit are already under siege.

What are barriers to look out for at the ballot box?

This year, Biden is all but assured to be his party’s nominee, but Super Tuesday can still offer a glimpse of the state of Black voter enthusiasm for his reelection campaign.

“The turnout will probably indicate some of the excitement that Black voters have for Biden,” explained Minta. “You’ve probably seen polls saying that Black men aren’t as enthused about Biden as Black women, and that this enthusiasm gap has increased a bit since 2020. So that’s something he’ll likely be paying attention to on Tuesday.”

Albright urged caution on the topic of Black voter turnout, stressing that the country’s voting rights framework has changed significantly even since 2020.

“Sometimes when people talk about these elections — whether the primary or the general — they lose sight of the fact that turnout is dictated not just by enthusiasm but also by the barriers to the ballot box Black voters are facing,” he said. “That piece of the story too often gets lost. It got lost in the 2022 elections, when people talked about turnout in Georgia and Texas. They made it seem as if Stacey Abrams and Beto O’Rourke just didn’t motivate people, completely ignoring voter suppression in those states.”

A new report from the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, finds that the racial turnout gap — defined as the “difference in the turnout rate between white and nonwhite voters” — is climbing most swiftly in the South and in other parts of the country that previously had to “preclear” changes to their voting policies with the U.S. Department of Justice.

The U.S. Supreme Court swept away this requirement in 2013, via Shelby County v. Holder.

All that being said, Powell explained that, so far, recent polling makes her hopeful about Super Tuesday.

A new poll from the Black to the Future Action Fund, the Black Futures Lab’s sister organization, shows that nearly 60% of Black North Carolinians intend to participate in the Tar Heel State’s primaries on Tuesday, and that 68% approve of the job Biden’s doing. For Cooper, that figure is 74%.

“Many in the mainstream media are talking about how Black voters have basically given up on Biden — either we’re not going to show up or we’re even considering Trump,” Powell said. “But our polling in North Carolina doesn’t show that. And we plan to continue polling across the South.”

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