NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump trounced Nikki Haley on Saturday in the South Carolina primary, a victory that emphatically punctuated the depth and breadth of his support among Republican primary voters as he vanquished his lone remaining major opponent in her home state.
Trump did not even have to mount a vigorous campaign, making few appearances and spending relatively little money. Haley has vowed to stay in the race and planned to visit Michigan, the site of the next primary, on Sunday. But the loss further eroded the rationale for her candidacy, barring something unforeseen that would derail the former president.
Here are some takeaways from the South Carolina leg of the campaign:
ALL (REPUBLICAN) POLITICS IS NATIONAL
Haley talked up her chances in “my sweet state of South Carolina” for months. Twice elected governor, initially as a tea party candidate in 2010, she was universally known in her state, and mostly for positive reasons. She had even served as Trump's ambassador to the United Nations. Her conservative record was clear.
And yet her credentials were no match for Trump's hold on the party.
Trump has now won with ease in the Midwest, the Northeast and the South, bulldozing any regional differences that had existed in the party before his rise.
Haley talked in 2024 about her successes recruiting industry to South Carolina and signing tax cuts and voter ID laws. She promoted her international experience. She excoriated Trump as too risky, too old, too busy fending off indictments, too close to Vladimir Putin and not close enough to NATO allies. Voters were not swayed.
AP VoteCast data reflected her challenge, especially on foreign policy. The survey found that about half of South Carolina primary voters wanted the U.S. to take a less active role in the world, while about 6 out of 10 opposed continuing aid to Ukraine in its defense against the Russian invasion. They were instead strongly aligned with Trump's vision.
Everything Haley tried reinforced the dynamics: To most Trump loyalists she sounded like just another politician offering establishment positions and trying to topple their champion.
HALEY STILL HAS NO OBVIOUS OR EVEN LIKELY WINS
Haley repeated that she plans to stick around. The Michigan primary is Feb. 27. Haley already has campaigned there and run advertising. The big prize follows, Super Tuesday on March 5, when about a third of Republicans’ 2,429 total delegates are at stake across primaries and caucuses in 15 states and one territory. Haley’s campaign manager, Betsy Ankney, notes often that many states that follow South Carolina have the same open primary rules. But not all of them. And that didn’t translate into a win at home anyway.
California, a majority-Democratic state, does not have open primaries. So Trump, even in a state where he’s not broadly popular, will be the favorite in a Republicans-only setting. Michigan does have an open primary. But that’s a state where progressives and Arab American voters are pushing voters to cast “uncommitted” ballots as a protest against President Joe Biden’s approach to the Israel-Hamas war. Biden’s campaign is countering. So that gives Democrats their own fight, with no incentive to cross over.
In short, if Haley couldn’t win in South Carolina, her chances of victories ahead are slim.
WHAT REALLY FORCES CANDIDATES TO DROP OUT
Presidential campaigns rarely end directly because of primary losses and delegates counts. They end when a candidate can’t keep the lights on anymore. And sometimes donors keep giving long after the scoreboard says it’s practically over.
Often, that’s the case when there is a real ideological fight within a party — see Bernie Sanders in 2016, when the democratic socialist was the vessel for progressive anger at Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party old guard. This time, for Republicans, it is a blend of personality, identity and ideology. Haley is the stand-in for all Republican check writers who loathe Trump and his version of the GOP.
And it's these anti-Trump Republicans who keep paying her campaign’s bills. It isn’t about delegates. So when Haley insists she is staying through to Super Tuesday, it’s because she has the resources to do so. At some point, if she doesn't have a dramatic reversal, those resources will dry up.
But this campaign has a major asterisk. Trump is facing more than 90 criminal charges in multiple jurisdictions, injecting unparalleled uncertainty into the race.
SPEECHES AND SPIN ASIDE, IT’S ABOUT DELEGATES
Haley's determination aside, the ultimate numbers that matter are not on her fundraising reports. It's the delegate math. And Trump was on pace to win all 50 delegates in South Carolina, widening his lead and making it increasingly clear that he will reach the 1,215-delegate majority long before the end of the primary calendar in late spring.
VP AUDITION HOUR, FEATURING SEN. TIM SCOTT
South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, who dropped his own presidential bid in November, enjoyed an extended spotlight in the unofficial contest to become Trump's running mate. First appointed to the Senate in 2012 by Haley, he was Trump's most visible surrogate in South Carolina, often heaping praise on a former president who can never seem to get too much validation.
Trump certainly noticed.
“He’s been such a great advocate,” Trump said at a Fox News town hall with Scott beside him. “He has been much better for me than he was for himself. I watched his campaign and he doesn’t like talking about himself, but boy, does he talk about Trump.”
Scott would give Trump loyalty and effective advocacy, without upstaging a former president who is always the headliner. Scott, as the only Black Republican in the Senate, also could appeal to Trump in his quest to increase GOP support from non-white voters.
But Trump has been known to flatter those who fawn over him, then make another choice.
THE BIDEN COALITION DID NOT SAVE HALEY
Haley never explicitly asked Democrats to help her against Trump, but she might as well have. She often reminded South Carolinians, who do not have to register by party, that the primary was open to all voters except the 125,000-plus who already had cast Democratic primary ballots Feb. 3.
She needed some of the remaining South Carolina Democrats, plus independents, to essentially give her a GOP version of the coalition Biden assembled against Trump in 2020. In a South Carolina Republican primary that would mean heavy support from wealthier, more moderate, college-educated white voters, especially around Columbia and Charleston. But Haley also needed at least some backing from Black voters in those areas and across small-town South Carolina.
It didn’t happen.
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CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Donald Trump won South Carolina’s Republican primary on Saturday, beating former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in her home state and further consolidating his path to a third straight GOP nomination.
Trump has now swept every contest that counted for Republican delegates, with wins already in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The former president’s latest victory will likely increase pressure on Haley, who was Trump’s former representative to the U.N. and South Carolina governor from 2011 to 2017, to leave the race.
A 2020 general rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden is becoming increasingly inevitable. Haley has vowed to stay in the race through at least the batch of primaries on March 5, known as Super Tuesday, but was unable to dent Trump’s momentum in her home state despite holding far more campaign events and arguing that the indictments against Trump will hamstring him against Biden.
South Carolina’s first-in-the-South primary has historically been a reliable bellwether for Republicans. In all but one primary since 1980, the Republican winner in South Carolina has gone on to be the party’s nominee. The lone exception was Newt Gingrich in 2012.
Haley said in recent days that she would head straight to Michigan for its Tuesday primary, the last major contest before Super Tuesday. She faces questions about where she might be able to win a contest or be competitive.
Trump and Biden are already behaving like they expect to face off in November.
Trump and his allies argue Biden has made the U.S. weaker and point to the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and Russia’s decision to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Trump has also repeatedly attacked Biden over high inflation earlier in the president’s term and his handling of record-high migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Trump has questioned — often in harshly personal terms — whether the 81-year-old Biden is too old to serve a second term. Biden’s team in turn has highlighted the 77-year-old Trump’s own flubs on the campaign trail.
Biden has stepped up his recent fundraising trips around the country and increasingly attacked Trump directly. He’s called Trump and his “Make America Great Again” movement dire threats to the nation’s founding principles, and the president’s reelection campaign has lately focused most of its attention on Trump suggesting he’d use the first day of a second presidency as a dictator and that he’d tell Russia to attack NATO allies who fail to keep up with defense spending obligations mandated by the alliance.
Haley also criticized Trump on his NATO comments and also for questioning why her husband wasn’t on the campaign trail with her — even as former first lady Melania Trump hasn’t appeared with him. Maj. Michael Haley is deployed in the Horn of Africa on a mission with the South Carolina Army National Guard.
But South Carolina’s Republican voters line up with Trump on having lukewarm feelings about NATO and continued U.S. support for Ukraine, according to AP VoteCast data from Saturday’s primary. About 6 in 10 oppose continuing aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russia. Only about a third described America’s participation in NATO as “very good,” with more saying it’s only “somewhat good.”
Haley has raised copious amounts of campaign money and is scheduled to begin a cross-country campaign swing on Sunday in Michigan ahead of Super Tuesday on March 5, when many delegate-rich states hold primaries.
But it’s unclear how she can stop Trump from clinching enough delegates to become the party’s presumptive nominee for the third time.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., complimented Haley while speaking to reporters at Trump’s election night party in Columbia but suggested it was time for her to drop out.
“I think the sooner she does, the better for her, the better for the party,” Graham said.
Trump’s political strength has endured despite facing 91 criminal charges related to his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Biden, the discovery of classified documents in his Florida residence and allegations that he secretly arranged payoffs to a porn actress.
The former president’s first criminal trial is set to begin on March 25 in New York, where he faces 34 counts of falsifying business records related to hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels in the closing weeks of his 2016 presidential campaign.
Biden won South Carolina’s Democratic primary earlier this month and faces only one remaining challenger, Dean Phillips. The Minnesota Democratic congressman has continued to campaign in Michigan ahead of the Democratic primary there, despite having little chance of actually beating Biden.
Though Biden is expected to cruise to his party’s renomination, he faces criticism from some Democrats for providing military backing to Israel in its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Some in his party support a ceasefire as the death toll in Israel’s war has reached 30,000 people, two-thirds of them women and children. The war could hurt the president’s general election chances in swing states like Michigan, which is home to a large Arab American population.
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