Nikki Haley upsets Trump; wins first Republican primary in Washington DC

Republican presidential contender Nikki Haley has won the Washington DC on Sunday, her first victory in the nominating process. She will pick up 19 delegates from her win, a small portion of the 1,215 delegates needed to clinch the nomination.

Haley, the only remaining challenger to Donald Trump in the race, won 62.9% of the vote, versus 33.2% captured by the former president. This is her first win in what remains an uphill battle to somehow overtake the former president for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, claimed all 19 convention delegates and carried more than 62% of the vote among the small pool of DC Republicans who participated in the three-day primary. She now takes her challenge to Trump to more than a dozen primaries being held on “Super Tuesday.”

— Trump is favored to win those contests, but the surprising result in Washington could augur better days for her campaign.

“Let’s do it,” Haley said on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter. “Thank you, DC! We fight for every inch.”

Haley spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas said: “It’s not surprising that Republicans closest to Washington dysfunction are rejecting Donald Trump and all his chaos.” She added that the victory “makes Nikki Haley the first woman to win a Republican primary in U.S. history.”

On his Truth Social website, Trump said he “purposely stayed away from the D.C. Vote because it is the ‘Swamp,'” and inconsequential. “The really big numbers will come on Super Tuesday,” Trump said.

The Trump campaign earlier mocked Haley’s victory in Washington, D.C., which they again called a “swamp” of political vice.

“While Nikki has been soundly rejected throughout the rest of America, she was just crowned Queen of the Swamp by the lobbyists and DC insiders that want to protect the failed status quo,” said a statement from Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt, adding: “The swamp has claimed their queen.”

The Republican footprint in Washington, D.C., is very small. Just a little more than 2,000 people voted in the GOP primary in a city with a population of nearly 680,000.

Trump won the first eight nominating contests by significant margins before losing to Haley in America’s capital city.

Trump had defeated Haley in previous contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and her home state of South Carolina.

The former president is also expected to win almost all nominating contests going forward, opinion polls show.

Republican strategist Doug Heye said Trump backers can complain about “the swamp” all they want, “but a whole lot of people who worked for Trump – who know him and his administration best – rejected him.”

Washington DC is 100% urban and a relatively high proportion of residents hold a college degree. The core of Trump’s base skews rural, and he is particularly strong in areas with low educational attainment.

The city also is home to a significant number of federal workers who Trump allies have pledged to fire en masse and replace with loyalists if he wins in November. Some categories of federal workers have seen an increase in death threats in recent years, and Trump often refers to the DC area as the “swamp.”

The former president needs 1,215 delegates to clinch the nomination, and 845 delegates will be available on Super Tuesday.