Former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Credit: Reuters Photo
Former President Donald Trump easily defeated Nikki Haley in South Carolina’s Republican primary Saturday, delivering a crushing blow in her home state and casting grave doubt on her continued viability.
Trump’s victory, called by The Associated Press right as polls closed at 7 p.m., was widely expected, and offers fresh fodder for his contention that the race is effectively over. Trump has swept the early states, and he is barreling toward the nomination even as a majority of delegates have yet to be awarded.
“This was a little sooner than we anticipated,” he said in Columbia, South Carolina, minutes after the race was called. He said he had “never seen the Republican Party so unified as it is right now.”
Trump has remained popular in South Carolina since his 2016 run, and polls before the primary consistently showed him with double-digit leads.
But Haley, the state’s former governor and a United Nations ambassador during the Trump administration, had hoped to buck the odds, and her loss at the hands of voters who are arguably the most familiar with her politics will fuel further uncertainty about her path forward.
Still, Haley has insisted she will stay in the race through Super Tuesday, on March 5, arguing that she is providing an alternative for voters opposed to Trump and maintaining that Americans deserve a chance to choose a candidate. Donors have continued to pour money into her bid, giving her the cash to keep going.
She will travel to Michigan on Sunday and has planned stops in a number of states before Super Tuesday, when about 36% of Republican delegates will be up for grabs.
The Democratic contest in South Carolina took place early this month, and President Joe Biden, running with only slight opposition, dominated once more with the help of the state’s large population of Black voters, who also propelled him in 2020.