Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Donald Trump has won the South Carolina Republican primary, defeating Nikki Haley in her home state and moving another step closer to winning his party’s nomination for president.
The Associated Press called the race for Trump the same minute the polls closed in South Carolina on Saturday. At just after 8pm Eastern Standard Time, Trump held 58 per cent of the vote and Haley held 42 per cent, with more than 20 per cent of the votes counted.
“This is a fantastic evening, it’s an early evening,” Trump said during his victory speech in Columbia, South Carolina, shortly after the polls closed. “On November 5, we’re going to look at Joe Biden, we’re going to look him straight in the eye — he’s destroying our country — and we’re going to say ‘Joe you’re fired! Get out Joe’”
Trump’s win in South Carolina comes after convincing victories in the Iowa caucuses, New Hampshire primary and Nevada caucuses last month — and raises fresh questions about how much longer Haley will stay in the race.
Trump insisted the Republican party was firmly behind him on Saturday night, telling supporters: “I have never seen the Republican party so unified as it is right now.”
But Haley has argued that a plurality of Republicans do not want the former president to be their nominee for the White House, and vowed ahead of Saturday’s vote that she would continue to fight on, whatever the outcome in South Carolina.
“South Carolina will vote on Saturday. But on Sunday, I’ll still be running for president,” Haley said in a speech this week at Clemson University, in Greenville, South Carolina. “We’re going to keep going all the way through Super Tuesday,” she said on Saturday morning, referring to March 5, when more than a dozen states will hold primaries.
Haley has spent heavily on campaign advertising, tapping a war chest filled by millions of dollars in donations from Wall Street and other deep-pocketed donors who have warmed to her Reaganite conservatism, considering her a viable alternative to Trump who is more likely to defeat President Joe Biden in a head-to-head contest in November.
Betsy Ankney, Haley’s campaign manager, said on Friday that Haley’s campaign would make a “seven figure” ad buy with adverts to run across the Super Tuesday states in the coming days. Haley spent about $11.4mn on ads in her home state this month, according to AdImpact data — over $10mn more than Trump.
“The math is challenging” for Haley to win the nomination, Ankney conceded. “But this has never just been about who can win a Republican primary. This battle is about who can win in November.”
A recent Marquette Law School poll found Trump and Biden virtually tied with voters nationwide, while Haley led Biden in a hypothetical general election match-up by 18 points.
To secure the Republican presidential nomination, a candidate must win an estimated 1,215 delegates from across the country before the official vote confirming the nomination at the party’s national convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in July.
Trump already has 63 delegates thanks to his earlier victories in the primary race, and Haley has 17. Another 50 are up for grabs in South Carolina: 27 to the outright winner and the rest divided according to results in each of the state’s seven congressional districts.
Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, senior advisers to Trump’s 2024 campaign, issued a memo this week insisting “the end is near” for Haley. Citing public and private polling data, LaCivita and Wiles said Trump was on course to rack up enough delegates to win the Republican nomination by mid-March.
On Saturday, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said Haley was “no longer living in reality” and “continues to gaslight voters and the media into believing she has a chance to win her home state of South Carolina and other states when she hasn’t received any type of real support or shown even a shred of momentum.”
“The primary ends tonight and it is time to turn to the general election,” Cheung added.
Source link
