Nikki Haley won the District of Columbia Republican primary on Sundayscoring his first victory of the 2024 campaign.
His victory at least temporarily halts the sweep of donald trump in the Republican votes, although the former president is expected to obtain several hundred more delegates in the Super Tuesday races this week.
Despite their defeats in the initial stages, Haley has said she would remain in the fight at least until those contests., although he did not want to name any primary in which he feels confident that he will win. Following her loss last week in her home state of South Carolina, Haley insisted that voters in subsequent states deserve an alternative to Trump even though he has dominated the campaign so far.
The Associated Press declared Haley the winner after Republican Party officials in the District of Columbia released the results. He obtained the 19 delegates in dispute.
“It is no surprise that Republicans closest to the dysfunction in Washington reject Donald Trump and all his chaos,” Haley spokeswoman Olivia Perez-Cubas said in a statement, noting that Haley became the first woman to win a Republican primary in history.
Washington is one of the most Democratic jurisdictions in the country, with only about 23,000 registered Republicans in the city. Democrat Joe Biden won the district in the 2020 general election with 92% of the votes.
The trump campaign issued a statement shortly after Haley’s win, in which he sarcastically congratulated her by calling her “Queen of the swamp by D.C. lobbyists and insiders who want to protect the failed status quo.”
Nikky Haley launches vs. donald trump
Haley held a rally Friday in the nation’s capital before addressing North Carolina and a series of states in which there will be primaries on Super Tuesday. He joked to more than 100 of his supporters gathered inside a hotel ballroom: “Who says there are no Republicans in the District of Columbia? Please!”.
“We’re trying to make sure we touch every hand we can and talk to every person,” he said.
While delivering his standard campaign speech, in which criticized Trump for increasing the federal deficit, one of the attendees shouted: “He cannot win a general election. He is crazy.” Haley agreed: She says she, and not Trump, is capable of preventing Biden from being re-elected.
Although she has said during her campaign that she is an avowed conservative, Haley has performed best among more moderate voters and independent trends.
Four in 10 Haley supporters in the South Carolina Republican primary considered themselves moderate, compared with 15% of Trump supporters, according to AP VoteCast, a poll of more than 2,400 voters conducted for the AP. by NORC at the University of Chicago. On the other hand, 80% of Trump supporters identified themselves as conservativein front of about half of Haley’s followers.
