[UPDATED, 7:15 a.m., 2/25/24] Former S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley failed to win her home state in a sharp GOP primary election with the man who has been the frontrunner for months – former President Donald Trump.
Haley, who got about 40% of the 755,800 ballots cast Saturday, said she wasn’t giving up her bid for the presidency.
“I know 40% is not 50%,” she told a boisterous crowd at Charleston Place concession speech. “But I also know 40% is not some tiny group. There are huge numbers of voters in our Republican primaries who are saying they want an alternative.
“I said earlier this week that no matter what happens in South Carolina, I would continue to run. I’m a woman of my word.”
Meanwhile, Trump looked forward to ultimate victory in a Saturday night victory speech in Columbia: “We’re going to be up here on November 5, and we’re going to look at Joe Biden, and we’re gonna look him right in the eye …We’re going to say ‘Joe, you’re fired. Get out. Get out, Joe. You’re fired.’”
“Not a Soviet-style election with one candidate”
The Associated Press and other media outlets called the increasingly contentious race soon after the polls closed after 7 p.m.
“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 AP reported. “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.”
With all counties reporting, unofficial returns showed Trump winning by a 60%-40% margin – slightly closer than two recent S.C. polls earlier this month that showed a 2-1 margin for Trump. The former president garnered 451,905 votes to Haley’s 298,674 votes. Total ballots cast were 755,800, according to the S.C. Election Commission – just over the number cast in the 2016 competitive GOP primary.
- Click here to see the latest results.
- In Charleston County, Haley was ahead of Trump by a 62% to 38% margin, according to unofficial returns. It was one of three of the state’s 46 counties where she was in the lead, The New York Times reported.
On Saturday night, Haley said she wouldn’t give up when a majority of Americans disapprove of Trump and incumbent Democratic President Joe Biden.
“South Carolina has spoken. We’re the fourth state to do so. In the next 10 days, another 21 states and territories will speak,” she said, referring to the March 5 Super Tuesday primary elections across the country.
“They have the right to a real choice – not a Soviet-style election with only one candidate. And I have a duty to give them that choice. We can’t afford four more years of Biden’s failures or Trump’s lack of focus.”
One longtime Columbia supporter, lawyer Bubba Cromer, said he was proud of Haley for her courage.
“She speaks truth to power,” he said late Saturday. “The world needs America as a partner. Haley secures that. Trump is chaos.”
As voters across the Palmetto State spilled into polls throughout Saturday, Haley continued to criticize the former president for whom she served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
In a morning broadcast of NBC’s The Today Show, she focused on what she called Trump’s obsession with Russian President Vladimir Putin:
“In South Carolina [two weeks ago], he gave a speech, and he said he would actually encourage Putin to invade our allies,” she said in a release. “Think about that – that means he’s siding with a dictator who kills his political opponents. He’s siding with a tyrant who arrests American journalists and holds them hostage. He’s siding with a thug who’s made no bones about the fact that he wants to destroy America.”
And on the day of the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, she also chided Trump: “The fact that half a million people have died or been wounded because Putin invaded Ukraine, this is the time that America needs to understand that Putin has made it very clear that once he takes Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics are next. If that happens, that puts America at war. We are trying to prevent war.
“And when Trump went and said that he wanted Putin to invade our allies? That immediately made our allies vulnerable. It emboldened Putin, which is why he’s now putting troops around the Baltic countries, and it puts all of our military men and women in those areas at risk.”
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