Former U.S. President Donald Trump is advancing quickly on his third straight Republican presidential nomination, heading toward a November rematch of the 2020 national election he lost to Democratic President Joe Biden.
Trump easily triumphed Saturday night, by a 60-40% margin, over his last remaining Republican challenger, Nikki Haley, his one-time United Nations ambassador, in her home state of South Carolina, where she served as governor from 2011 to 2017.
Trump has now swept every contest on the Republican Party’s early-season calendar of caucuses and primary elections that award delegates to this summer’s national nominating convention. The results have forced other candidates to drop out of the race for the party’s presidential nomination and left Haley in a distant second place.
Haley declared that the South Carolina outcome was not “the end of our story” and flew to Michigan for rallies ahead of Republican primary voting in the midwestern state on Tuesday. She pledged to stay in the race through Super Tuesday contests on March 5, when 15 states vote.
Haley has repeatedly told rallies, as national polling shows, that a substantial majority of Americans do not want a Trump-Biden rematch. She has predicted that Trump, facing an unprecedented four criminal indictments encompassing 91 charges and one of his trials starting in a month, will lose to Biden a second time.
Trump, meanwhile, basked in his easy South Carolina win, telling supporters shortly after the polls closed, “I have never seen the Republican Party so unified as it is right now.”
Most current top Republican officials in the southern state supported Trump.
U.S. Representative Russell Fry said, “This has always been a primary in name only,” and that Trump was never in jeopardy of losing to Haley. Fry said Trump would be the Republican presidential nominee and the South Carolina result was “just further validation of that.”
Texas Governor Greg Abbott, another Trump ally, said the former president was on “a pathway” to being able to clinch the party’s presidential nomination by mid-March. “I would say the wind is strongly” at his back, Abbott told CNN’s “State of the Union” show.
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham suggested it was time for Haley to drop out of the Republican presidential nominating contest.
“I think the sooner she does, the better for her, the better for the party,” Graham said.
But Haley told supporters she would not quit the race, saying, “We’ll keep fighting for America and we won’t rest until America wins.”
In a fund-raising appeal on Sunday, Trump called his South Carolina win a “complete & total victory!”
He asked for a million “pro-Trump patriots” to send him more campaign cash, saying, “If we’re going to completely humiliate those who’ve always doubted us, I’m asking for your support before the day is over.”