Trump wins primaries in South Carolina, his opponent’s state | US Elections 2024

There was no room for many surprises in the South Carolina Republican Party primary contested on Saturday. Donald Trump collected 59.8% of the votes compared to Nikki Haley, who remained at 39.5% and saw what would have been his best chance of frustrating the former North American President’s favoritism overturned.

Trump’s victory in Haley’s home state, where he was governor between 2011 and 2017, does not seem to leave many doubts about his path towards the Republican nomination for the November presidential election. Trump won all caucus and primaries disputed so far – Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and the British Virgin Islands – and now only thinks about the duel with Joe Biden.

“I just want to say that I have never seen the Republican Party as united as it is at this moment,” declared Trump, in a speech in which he did not even name his only opponent for the presidential nomination.

O New York Times decreed, after Trump’s triumph in South Carolina, that the Republican primaries are no longer elections, but rather a “coronation”. In less than two months, Trump was recording victory after victory, at the same time as he saw his internal opponents abandon the race, including strong names such as former Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who many saw as the main candidate for defeat the former President.

“This is the fastest primary process I can remember,” he told NYT veteran Republican strategist Ron Kaufman, who has been following primaries since the 1970s. “There is no one who does not look to Trump as the nominee, including Nikki Haley,” he stressed.

Some Republicans who oppose Trump hoped that, in a two-way race, Haley could gain an advantage, concentrating the anti-MAGA (Make America Great Again movement) votes. But these calculations turned out to be largely wrong. Even in the Nevada primary election, in which Trump did not participate, Haley received fewer votes than the “None of these candidates” option (Trump ended up winning the caucusrunning alone, taking the state delegates).

And now, with a substantial defeat in the state in which, from the outset, she started with the advantage of being known and popular with the electorate, she will have dealt the decisive blow to her candidacy.

“Soviet election”

Haley may seek solace in losing by a smaller margin than expected. On the eve of the primaries, polls pointed to an even more pronounced difference, around 30 points.

Despite the failures, the former US ambassador to the United Nations promised to continue campaigning at least until “super Tuesday”, March 5, when 15 states and one territory administered by the United States go to vote.

“What I saw today was South Carolina’s frustration with the direction of our country,” Haley told supporters in Charleston. “I said at the beginning of the week that regardless of what happened in South Carolina, I would remain in the presidential race. I am a woman of my word,” she declared.

Contrary to the advice of some experts who defend her abandonment of the campaign, Haley seems committed to not granting Trump an immediate victory, criticizing those who anticipate a “Soviet-style election with a single candidate”.

His campaign announced that it will make a heavy investment in television advertisements until “Super Tuesday”, in the order of “seven figures”, to try to capture as many people who are unhappy with Trump as possible.

The former President’s allies would have preferred Haley to concede defeat now and accuse her of dividing the party. “The fact is that Haley’s campaign has become a Never Trump in which she is the greatest representative of Dishonest Joe Biden,” said Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung. “The primaries end tonight and it is time to turn to the general election,” he added.

A month has passed since Trump and Haley faced each other directly in the primaries and, although the former President’s legal problems have only increased, the truth is that, for the majority of Republican voters, this does not seem to change their preference in any way. .

In recent weeks, two court decisions ordered the businessman to pay damages totaling more than 500 million dollars – which Trump intends to appeal – for lying in his asset declarations and in the case of sexual assault and defamation brought by writer E. Jean Carroll .

Furthermore, during this period, Trump made one of the most shocking statements since he entered politics, when he suggested that he could encourage Russia to invade NATO member countries that did not spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense.