COLUMBIA, S.C. — 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, according to the Associated Press.
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.
Official election results will soon be coming in for the 2024 South Carolina Republican Primary. Polls closed at 7 p.m. WLTX will have live, real-time election results for the South Carolina Republican Party throughout the night. We'll also have live reports and analyses from our political insiders.
After the Associated Press called the contest for Trump, the South Carolina Republican and Democratic parties issued statements.
From SCGOP Chairman Drew McKissick: "South Carolina is Trump Country again! It was true in 2016 and 2020, and South Carolina Republicans just put an exclamation point on it today. His Promises Made, Promises Kept agenda is what strengthened our country before, and can do it again. If we want to grow our economy, close our Southern border and save our country from a radical leftist agenda, then we need to unite our Party right now and put Donald Trump BACK in the White House this November."
From SC Democratic Party Chair Christale Spain: “The stage for November has been set, and the choices South Carolinians will have at the voting booth are becoming clear. Voters have seen what’s at stake: Donald Trump is running to ban abortion nationwide, end the Affordable Care Act, and gut Social Security and Medicare — all while pulling apart the fabric of our democracy.
"Three weeks ago, a diverse coalition of Black voters, rural voters, Medicare recipients, college students, teachers, service members and veterans overwhelmingly showed up to support Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and they’re ready to do it at the ballot box once again so they can continue delivering record accomplishments for South Carolina.”
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. This year's contest is an unusual one-on-one matchup between a former president and a generally popular home-state figure.
Trump and Haley were campaigning Friday ahead of Saturday's South Carolina Republican presidential primary, in which the Associated Press reports the former president is the overwhelming favorite, despite Haley having been twice elected South Carolina governor.
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.
In 2016, Trump won the South Carolina primary with 32% of the vote on his way to the White House.
According to USC political professor Chase Myer, South Carolina's primary plays a key role in deciding who will be on the November ballot.
"South Carolina traditionally picks the Republican nominee. Going back to the 1980s, the Republican primary in South Carolina has chosen the eventual Republican nominee every year except in 2012," Myer said.
Trump went into this primary with a huge polling lead and the backing of the state's top Republicans, including Sen. Tim Scott, a former rival in the race. Haley, who served as U.N. ambassador under Trump, has spent weeks crisscrossing the state, warning that the dominant front-runner, who is 77 and faces four indictments, is too old and distracted to be president again.
Trump has swept into the state for a handful of large rallies between fundraisers and events in other states, including Michigan, which holds its GOP primary Tuesday.
He has drawn much larger crowds and campaigned with Gov. Henry McMaster, who succeeded Haley, and Scott, who was elevated to the Senate by Haley.
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.
In some of those rallies, Trump has made comments that handed Haley more fodder for her stump speeches, such as his Feb. 10 questioning why her husband — currently on a South Carolina Army National Guard deployment to Africa — hadn't been campaigning alongside her. Haley turned that point into an argument that the front-runner doesn't respect servicemembers and their families, long a criticism that has followed Trump going back to his suggesting the late Sen. John McCain, a prisoner of war in Vietnam, wasn't a hero because he was captured.
That same night, Trump asserted that he would encourage countries like Russia "to do whatever the hell they want" against NATO member countries who failed to meet the transatlantic alliance's defense spending targets. Haley has been holding out that moment as evidence that Trump is too volatile and "getting weak in the knees when it comes to Russia."
After one of Haley's events, Terry Sullivan, a U.S. Navy veteran who lives in Hopkins, said he had planned to support Trump but changed his mind after hearing Haley's critique of his NATO comments.
Haley has made an indirect appeal to Democrats who, in large numbers, sat out their own presidential primary earlier this month, adding into her stump speech a line that "anybody can vote in this primary as long as they didn't vote in the Feb. 3 Democrat primary."
Some of those voters have been showing up at her events, saying that although they planned to vote for Biden in the general election, they planned to cross over to the GOP primary on Saturday to oppose Trump now.
In any other campaign cycle, a home state loss might be detrimental to a campaign. In 2016, Sen. Marco Rubio dropped out shortly after losing Florida in a blowout to Trump after his campaign argued the political winds would shift in his favor once the campaign moved to his home state.
Haley's campaign can't name a state where they feel she will be victorious over Trump. "The primary ends tonight, and it is time to turn to the general election," Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said Saturday.
But in a speech this past week in Greenville, Haley said she would stay in the campaign "until the last person votes," arguing that those whose contests come after the early primaries and caucuses deserved the right to have a choice between candidates.
Haley also used that speech — which many had assumed was an announcement she was shuttering her campaign — to argue that she feels "no need to kiss the ring," as others had, possibly with prospects of serving as Trump's running mate in mind.