Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley has spoiled former President Donald Trump’s hopes of sweeping the Super Tuesday GOP presidential primaries.
Haley, who served under Trump as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, pulled off an unexpected win over the former president in Vermont on Tuesday, achieving her second 2024 primary victory so far, according to the Associated Press.
The former governor was beating the ex-president by a margin of approximately 4 percent with over 83 percent of the vote counted at the time of publication. She will take the majority of Vermont’s 17 GOP delegates.
Haley previously beat Trump on Sunday in the District of Columbia, which had 19 GOP delegates at stake. At least 1,215 delegates are required to clinch the Republican nomination.
Emil Lippe
While Haley’s win in D.C. was expected by many political observers, her victory in Vermont came as a surprise. Limited polling in the state showed Trump leading the former governor by a wide margin in the months before the primary.
Polls conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center in January and February showed Trump ahead of Haley by margins of 28 and 30 points, respectively.
Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung responded to Newsweek’s request for comment via email by asking, “how many delegates did President Trump win tonight?”
While the final delegate count was unknown as some races were still uncalled at the time of publication, Trump will undoubtedly win many more delegates than Haley on Tuesday. However, he was also expected to win in Vermont.
Newsweek also reached out for comment to the Haley campaign via email on Tuesday night.
Haley’s victory suggests that the polls in Vermont were either wildly inaccurate, the former president suffered a significant decline in support over the past month, or some combination of both.
Trump won the majority of Tuesday’s primaries and remains far and away the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. His first opportunity to officially clinch it will come later this month.
The former president predicted victory on Super Tuesday and lashed out at Haley, to whom he derisively refers as “birdbrain,” after losing the D.C. primary on Sunday.
Trump insisted in a Truth Social post that he only lost in the nation’s capital because he “purposely stayed away from the D.C. Vote because it is the ‘Swamp,’ with very few delegates, and no upside.”
“Birdbrain is a loser, record low performance in virtually every State,” Trump wrote. “Birdbrain spent all of her time, money and effort there [in D.C.] … The really big numbers will come on Super Tuesday.”
A total of 16 states and one territory, American Samoa, held Super Tuesday primary elections. Over one-third of delegates required for both the GOP and Democratic presidential nominations were at stake.
President Joe Biden also suffered a loss on Tuesday, falling to unknown candidate Jason Palmer, an entrepreneur who previously worked for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in American Samoa’s Democratic caucus.
However, the U.S. territory will not participate in November’s presidential election and has a history of choosing candidates in its Democratic caucuses who later lost, having delivered victory to billionaire Michael Bloomberg in 2020.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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