By MEG KINNARD and WILL WEISSERT (Related Press)
WASHINGTON — Nikki Haley has gained the Republican major within the District of Columbia, notching her first victory of the 2024 marketing campaign.
Her victory Sunday not less than briefly halts Donald Trump’s sweep of the GOP voting contests, though the previous president is prone to choose up a number of hundred extra delegates on this week’s Tremendous Tuesday races.
Regardless of her early losses, Haley has mentioned she would stay within the race not less than via these contests, though she has declined to call any major she felt assured she would win. Following final week’s loss in her dwelling state of South Carolina, Haley remained adamant that voters within the locations that adopted deserved a substitute for Trump regardless of his dominance so far within the marketing campaign.
The Related Press declared Haley the winner Sunday evening after D.C. Republican Celebration officers launched the outcomes. She gained all 19 delegates at stake.
Washington is among the most closely Democratic jurisdictions within the nation, with solely about 23,000 registered Republicans within the metropolis. Democrat Joe Biden gained the district within the 2020 normal election with 92% of the vote.
Haley held a rally within the nation’s capital on Friday earlier than heading again to North Carolina and a sequence of states holding Tremendous Tuesday primaries. She joked with greater than 100 supporters inside a resort ballroom, “Who says there’s no Republicans in D.C., come on.”
“We’re attempting to guarantee that we contact each hand that we will and converse to each particular person,” Haley mentioned.
As she gave her commonplace marketing campaign speech, criticizing Trump for operating up federal deficit, one rallygoer bellowed, “He can’t win a normal election. It’s insanity.” That prompted settlement from Haley, who argues that she will deny Biden a second time period however Trump gained’t have the ability to.
Whereas campaigning as an avowed conservative, Haley has tended to carry out higher amongst extra reasonable and independent-leaning voters.
4 in 10 Haley supporters in South Carolina’s GOP major had been self-described moderates, in contrast with 15% for Trump, based on AP VoteCast, a survey of greater than 2,400 voters collaborating within the Republican major in South Carolina, performed for AP by NORC on the College of Chicago. However, 8 in 10 Trump supporters recognized as conservatives, in comparison with about half of Haley’s backers.
Trump gained an uncontested D.C. major throughout his 2020 reelection bid however positioned a distant third 4 years earlier behind Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and former Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Rubio’s win was one in every of solely three in his unsuccessful 2016 bid. Different extra centrist Republicans, together with Mitt Romney and John McCain, gained town’s primaries in 2012 and 2008 on their solution to successful the GOP nomination.
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Kinnard reported from Columbia, South Carolina.
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