Biden loses American Samoa caucus to Jason Palmer

Well, that was unexpected.

President Biden appears to have suffered a stunning Super Tuesday defeat in the American Somoa caucus at the hands of Jason Palmer.

Palmer is a tech entrepreneur who has worked at Microsoft and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Like Biden’s other longshot rivals, he has argued that it’s time for the president to pass the baton onto the next generation.

The lesser-known Democratic hopeful has also called on the federal government to ramp up its game on technology.

Preliminary results showed Palmer rocketing past Biden and his longshot rivals such as Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) in the American Samoa caucus.

Those results are set to be certified on Friday. American Samoa had six delegates up for grabs.

Organizations such as Decision Desk HQ have called the race for Palmer. NBC News also had Palmer ahead. Many top news organizations had not been tracking the tiny caucus event.

Under 100 people appear to have participated, according to the early results. American Samoa has a population of roughly 45,000 residents.

The island nation didn’t go for Biden in 2020 either — instead giving former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg his only Super Tuesday win.

Tuesday’s contest was one of 16 taking place on the Democratic side on Super Tuesday. Republicans will hold their presidential caucus in the territory on Friday.

This appears to be the first night that someone other than Biden won delegates on the Democratic side. Granted, “uncommitted” had two delegates under its belt heading into Super Tuesday.

But none of Biden’s human competitors had any delegates until Tuesday evening.

Biden had been widely expected to run the table Super Tuesday and easily cruise to victory in all 16 contests. He still has not lost any states.

While American Samoa was not a major contest, the defeat is a bit of a blemish on his record.

Both former President Donald Trump’s and Biden’s campaigns have taken turns flagging electoral data coming in Super Tuesday that they believe shows their rival struggling to unite their respective party.