Former US president Donald Trump on Saturday won South Carolina’s Republican primary, easily beating former UN ambassador Nikki Haley in her home state and further consolidating his path to a third straight nomination.
Trump has swept every contest that counted for Republican delegates, adding to previous wins in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and the US Virgin Islands. Haley is facing growing pressure to leave the race, but says she is not going anywhere despite losing by more than 20 percentage points in the state where she was governor from 2011 to 2017.
A 2020 rematch between Trump and US President Joe Biden is becoming increasingly inevitable.
Photo: AFP
Haley has vowed to stay in the race through at least the batch of primaries on Tuesday next week, known as Super Tuesday, when voters in 15 states and one US territory would deliver one-third of the delegates to the Republican National Convention, which would choose a nominee in July.
However, she was unable to dent Trump’s momentum in her home state despite holding far more campaign events and arguing that the indictments against Trump would hamstring him against Biden.
“I have never seen the Republican Party so unified as it is right now,” Trump said, taking the stage for his victory speech mere moments after polls closed.
South Carolina’s first-in-the-south primary has historically been a reliable bellwether for Republicans. In all but one primary since 1980, the Republican winner in the state has gone on to be the party’s nominee. The lone exception was Newt Gingrich in 2012.
Many Trump-backing South Carolinians, even some who previously supported Haley during her time as governor, were not willing to give her a home-state bump.
“She’s done some good things,” Davis Paul, 36, said about Haley as he waited for Trump at a recent rally in Conway. “But I just don’t think she’s ready to tackle a candidate like Trump. I don’t think many people can.”
Haley’s campaign has released an aggressive schedule for the next several days, during which she will crisscross the country, from Massachusetts to Utah.
“They have the right to a real choice, not a Soviet-style election with only one candidate,” Haley told supporters on Saturday night after her defeat. “I have a duty to give them that choice.”
She appeared to have done somewhat better than statewide opinion polls had projected, which could give her an opportunity to argue that she has some momentum as the race expands to more states.
In remarks to supporters, Haley said her share of the vote demonstrated that a sizeable number of Republicans still harbor doubts about Trump.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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