Trump inches closer to Republican nomination
Donald Trump cruised to a lightning victory on Saturday in South Carolina’s Republican primary, blitzing rival Nikki Haley in her home state and continuing his march to the nomination and a White House rematch with Joe Biden in November.
Trump completed a sweep of the first four major nominating contests, converting a year of blockbuster polls into a likely insurmountable lead going into the “Super Tuesday” 15-state voting bonanza in 10 days.
Haley had vowed to fight on regardless of the outcome, but Trump, seeking to move quickly from the primary to the general election, didn’t mention her once during a victory speech in which he turned his fire on Biden.
“We’re going to be up here on Nov 5 and we’re going to look at Joe Biden. We’re going to look him right in the eye. He’s destroying our country, and we’re going to say, Joe, you’re fired. Get out,” Trump said to cheers at his victory party in state capital Columbia.
Haley has repeatedly questioned the 77-year-old former president’s mental fitness and warned another Trump presidency would bring “chaos”, but her efforts appeared to do little to damage his standing among Republicans.
The margin of victory was not immediately clear, but US networks felt able to call the race within seconds of the polls closing, suggesting that there was little doubt over the outcome.
University of South Carolina politics professor David Darmofal said the speed of Trump’s projected victory confirmed him as “effectively the presumptive Republican nominee for president”.
“This quick call is a bad result for former governor Haley in her home state. The quickness of the call will likely lead to additional pressure for her to drop out of the race.”
Haley, a popular governor of South Carolina in the 2010s and the only woman to have entered the Republican contest, was looking to outperform expectations in her backyard and ride into Super Tuesday with wind in her sails.
Biden reacted to the result with a brief written statement warning of “the threat Donald Trump poses to our future as Americans grapple with the damage he left behind”.