Nikki Haley will meet Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and other war cabinet members…reports Asian Lite News
Republican leader and former US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley has reached Israel where she will tour the southern and northern provinces and meet with families of hostages held by Hamas.
Member of Israel Knesset and former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon will accompany Nikki Haley on her tour within Israel.
The Republican leader, who is tipped to be the running mate of Donald Trump, will travel to south Israel, including Kibbutz Be’eri, Kfar Aza, Nir Oz and other areas bordering Gaza where the Hamas massacre took place on October 7, 2023.
It may be recalled that 1,200 people were killed and around 250 persons taken as hostages in Gaza.
Nikki Haley will meet Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and other war cabinet members.
Recently three close policy advisors of former US President, Donald Trump — Robert O’Brien who was Trump’s National Security Advisor (NSA), John Rakolta, former Ambassador of the US to the UAE, and Ed McMullen, former US ambassador to Switzerland were in Israel.
The three had met the Prime Minister and Opposition leader Yair Lapid during their trip. John Rakolta was one of the key persons involved in the Abraham Accords and the one behind the Israel-UAE diplomatic engagement. The visit of the three close aides of Trump and now Nikki Haley is being considered in Israel as aDonald’s Trump’s move to garner the support of the Jewish community in the ensuing Presidential polls.
Nikki Haley is against anti-Semitism and has maintained that the treatment of Israel by the UN institutions led to the October 7 attack….reports Asian Lite News
Republican party leader and former US Presidential candidate Nikki Haley will visit Israel next week.
Haley will be accompanied by Danny Danon, an Israel Member of Knesset (MK) who was the ambassador of Israel to the United Nations. Nikki Haley also has served as the ambassador of the United States to the United Nations.
She will tour the Southern Israel areas including Kibbutz Be’eri and Kfar Aza regions which border Gaza and where Hamas killed 1200 people and also kidnapped over 200 people on October 7 last year.
Nikki Haley is against anti-Semitism and has maintained that the treatment of Israel by the UN institutions led to the October 7 attack.
National Security Advisor (NSA) in the Trump administration Robert O’Brien; former US ambassador to the UAE and architect of Abraham Accord John Rakolta; and Ed McMullen former Ambassador of the US to Switzerland, have also visited Israel in the last few days.
The presence of Trump’s close policy advisors and the arrival of Nikki Haley – the Republican leader and probable running mate of Trump in the Presidential election is an indication that Donald Trump and the Republican party will provide outright support to Israel in the current war.
The former two-time South Carolina Governor is expected to make the announcement on Wednesday at Charleston in her home state…reports Asian Lite News
Indian-American Republican presidential aspirant Nikki Haley is set to quit the race for the White House, clearing the decks for her former boss and GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, according to media reports.
The former two-time South Carolina Governor is expected to make the announcement on Wednesday at Charleston in her home state, sources in know of her plans told CNN.
The 52-year-old on Tuesday scored a surprising victory over Trump in the Republican primary in Vermont state, which came just after her Washington DC win, putting her in the history books as the first woman ever to achieve the milestone.
Her move follows a series of losses in GOP nominating contests on Super Tuesday where her rival Trump maintained a formidable lead.
Trump and US President Joe Biden are leading in “Super Tuesday” wins in their respective party’s primaries for the 2024 presidential election.
Having been defeated in South Carolina, her home state, questions were being raised about Haley’s presence in the race, and more importantly, how long would she get donors to pump money into her campaign.
Despite her debacle at the primary, Haley made clear in her speech that she was not giving up.
“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,” she said. “I’m not giving up this fight when a majority of Americans disapprove of both Donald Trump and Joe Biden,” she added, sharpening her attacks on Biden and Trump by calling them “grumpy old men”.
This is the former South Carolina Governor’s first victory over the former president in the 2024 campaign to become the Republican presidential candidate…reports Asian Lite News
Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley has defeated former US President Donald Trump in Washington DC in the Republican primary on Monday.
Haley garnered 1,274 votes to former President Trump’s 676 with all precincts reporting. This is her first victory over the former president in the 2024 campaign to become the Republican presidential candidate.
With this, Haley has created history by becoming the first woman ever to win a Republican presidential primary. She is also the first Indian-American to have won either the Democratic or the Republican primaries. The three other previous Indian American presidential aspirants – Bobby Jindal in 2016, Kamala Harris in 2020 and Vivek Ramaswamy in 2024 – had failed to win even one primary.
Haley, the former US envoy to the UN, lost in South Carolina, her home state. But she is the first woman to win a Republican primary in US history.
The contest took place in a downtown hotel just steps away from the heart of Washington DC’s lobbying hub over the weekend. According to Republican party officials, Haley carried nearly 63 per cent of the vote.
Nikki Haley’s win in Washington, DC Republican primary came after Trump defeated her in caucuses in Missouri and Idaho and at a Republican convention in Michigan on Saturday. Trump is moving towards the GOP nomination and is favoured to secure win in primaries across 16 Super Tuesday states this week.
The GOP electorate in DC, where Republicans constitute just 5 per cent of registered voters is hardly representative of the conservative base found in majority of the other parts of the US.
Patrick Mara, chair of the DC Republican Party, said, “This universe is a little more sophisticated than just about any universe in any other state.” He further said, “I listen to the political podcasts in the morning. I read the newsletters throughout the day. That’s probably, like, half the people showing up at this.”
Dan Schuberth, who runs a trade association in downtown DC and backed Haley in the primary called his fellow DC Republicans as “a pretty unique electorate,” perhaps the only in the nation where many several voters personally know the people working on one or both of the campaigns.
Voting for the Washington, DC Republican primary took place at the Madison Hotel over three days. On Friday, Haley held a campaign rally there. Trump’s prospects to win the DC GOP primary were not high as he was at third spot behind Marco Rubio and John Kasich during the contest in 2016.
This year, Trump’s campaign warned lobbyists DC lobbyists that they will be blacklisted from any future Trump White House access if they did not cast vote in the weekend’s primary.
During her campaign in Massachusetts on Saturday, Haley criticised Trump for the move. She said, “You can’t threaten people. You can’t push them out, because that is not a winning combination.”
Despite her win in the primary on Sunday, Haley has not hinted that she plans to continue her campaign after the contests on Tuesday.
Speaking to a roundtable of DC political reporters on Friday, Haley maintained that she was only “thinking about Super Tuesday,” and not what she plans to do beyond that. She is scheduled to hold a campaign in Texas on Monday. However, she has no public events or election gathering scheduled for Tuesday.
Trump still has an early lead in delegates attained that will likely grow significantly on Tuesday with the additional states voting. Candidates need at least 1,215 delegates to mathematically clinch the Republican nomination.
All eyes now lie on 16 states that will cast ballots on March 5 which is Super Tuesday. These states are – Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa (caucus), Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia. Furthermore, American Samoa is also scheduled to hold a nominating contest on March 5.
The Democratic primary in DC will take place in June.
In the 2020 election against Trump, then candidate Joe Biden won 92 percent of the votes in Washington. The city has never produced a majority vote for a Republican presidential candidate.
The Haley campaign put out a statement saying “It’s not surprising that Republicans closest to Washington dysfunction are rejecting Donald Trump and all his chaos.”
Trump’s campaign in turn released what it called a “statement on Nikki Haley Being Crowned Queen of The Swamp.” “Tonight’s results in Washington DC reaffirm the object of President Trump’s campaign — he will drain the swamp and put America first,” the statement said.
The Super Tuesday milestone is expected to leave Trump a hair’s breadth from securing the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. He has already swept all the early state primaries.
Super Tuesday is seen as the last real chance for Haley to upend the former president’s march towards becoming the party’s flagbearer once again, against Biden.
Nikki Haley said, “I’m a woman of my word,” referring to her earlier remarks about staying in the presidential race until Super Tuesday.
Former US President came another step closer to getting the Republican presidential nomination by registering a landslide victory in the South Carolina primary on Saturday and defeating GOP rival Nikki Haley at her home turf and casting grave doubt on her long-term viability.
According to CNN, Trump’s dominance in South Carolina was ‘hardly surprising’, as the state is considered among the “most conservative” in the country and has backed the former president every time he’s been on the ballot.
In the primary held on Saturday, Trump secured 59.8 per cent of the GOP votes and 44 delegates, lying at a wide margin from Nikki Haley who got 39.5 per cent votes and only three delegates, as per the data projected by CNN.
According to a CNN exit poll of primary voters in the state, more than 4 in 10 described themselves as being affiliated with the MAGA movement, while roughly 8 in 10 described themselves as conservative. Only a third of respondents acknowledged President Joe Biden as the “rightful winner” of the 2020 election.
There was not much doubt about the final result in South Carolina, as most polls already showed Trump with a 25-30 points lead.
“Why should the 40% have to cave to Trump,” NIKKI HALEY asks a packed crowd of 800 in Michigan.
“I’ll take cuts. I’ll take the bruises. I’ll go through the pain, because I know sometimes these best things require the pain.” pic.twitter.com/Bh7FCPwn7G
Even after the results, Trump exuded confidence in getting into a 2020 rematch with incumbent Joe Biden.
Speaking to Fox News Digital, Trump said he is not sure Nikki Haley is “even really in the race” adding that he is focused on beating President Biden in the general election in November.
“I was honoured that I received the largest vote in the history of the state — I’m with Senator Lindsey Graham right now and he just told me we received the largest vote by double — we beat the last record,” Trump said. “So that’s a great compliment to all of the people and to making America great again.”
On being asked whether he wanted Nikki Haley to drop out of the race, Trump said that he’s “really not thinking about that… I’m not thinking about it.”
“I’m really thinking about we have to beat Joe Biden,” he told Fox News Digital. “I don’t know if she’s in the race at all, because, you know, I have set records in every single state. I’m not sure that she’s really in the race.”
Meanwhile, Nikki Haley has maintained that she is not quitting the race and will continue her White House bid claiming that a significant disapprove of both Biden and Trump.
Speaking in Charleston, Haley said, “I’m a woman of my word,” referring to her earlier remarks about staying in the presidential race until Super Tuesday. “I’m not giving up this fight when a majority of Americans disapprove of both Donald Trump and Joe Biden.”
Haley admitted that she lost by a wide margin. However, she highlighted “40 per cent is not some tiny group.” She stated that even though she has lost four states to Trump. However, there are many more states where people have not still voted, CNN reported.
She said, “In the next 10 days, another 21 states and territories will speak. They have the right to a real choice, not a Soviet-style election with only one candidate.” She added, “And I have a duty to give them that choice”.
“I’m not giving up this fight when a majority of Americans disapprove of both Donald Trump and Joe Biden.” (Credit X@NikkiHaley)
After the South Carolina results, the contest now shifts into a new gear starting now. The slow march through the early voting states is over and the primary is now a national one
By March 12, 56 per cent of the delegates to the Republican National Convention will have been awarded. In most states, Republicans’ delegates are ‘winner-take-all’ — which means Haley gets no credit for strong second-place showings, as reported by CNN.
As Haley has remained winless so far, the finish line — 1,215 delegates necessary to clinch the nomination — could be in sight for Trump within weeks.
The next test comes Tuesday in Michigan’s primary, though state Republicans have opted to award their delegates partially through the primary and partially through a caucus convention days later. It will be followed by caucuses in Idaho and Missouri, along with primaries in North Dakota. Then, on Super Tuesday, 36 per cent of the party’s delegates are at stake.
Trump won the GOP nomination in 2016, went on to become the President and ran all but a select few Republican critics out of office or the party, then stormed into the 2024 race despite facing multiple indictments
Trump’s success in Haley’s home state, underscores the dominance and command Trump holds within his party. Most Republican voters are all in on Trump.
The results have raised serious concerns over the future of Nikki Haley’s campaign.
It was considered that Haley’s voters consist of a ‘theoretical coalition’ This includes moderate Republicans, particularly suburban, college-educated voters who have fled the party since Trump’s ascension in 2016. It also consists of independents allowed to vote in Republican primaries in some states, such as New Hampshire and South Carolina, as per CNN.
But, the results have again shown that coalition isn’t showing up for Haley, at least not in enough force to bring any substantial effect.
Meanwhile, Haley’s campaign has announced a ‘swing’ through Michigan, Minnesota, Colorado and Utah starting Sunday. She’s also spending money on television and digital advertising targeting the states that vote on Super Tuesday on March 5.
“In the next 10 days, another 21 states and territories will speak. They have the right to a real choice, not a Soviet-style election with only one candidate,” Haley said in her concession speech.
But, whether the former UN Ambassador will actually be able to notch any wins and emerge as a serious challenge to Trump in the delegate race, is a tougher question.
Another important result of South Carolina’s primary might be the relationship between Trump and his onetime 2024 GOP primary rival, Senator Tim Scott, who is speculated to be in consideration for the vice presidential nomination, CNN reported.
He campaigned with Trump, appeared alongside him in a Fox News town hall and other interviews, and urged Haley — who appointed him to his Senate seat when she was governor — to get out of the race. (ANI)
Haley’s response came following the remarks made by the former president on Saturday during a rally in her state….reports Asian Lite News
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley attacked former United States President Donald Trump for remarks he made about her husband, who is in the military and stationed abroad, according to The Hill.
“Michael is deployed serving our country, something you know nothing about,” Haley said in a post on social media platform X. “Someone who continually disrespects the sacrifices of military families has no business being commander in chief.”
Haley’s response came following the remarks made by the former president on Saturday during a rally in her state.
“Where’s her husband?” Trump said. “‘Oh, he’s away, he’s away.’ What happened to her husband? What happened to her husband? Where is he? He’s gone,” he said, according to The Hill.
Haley’s husband, Major Michael Haley, was deployed to Africa in June of last year with the South Carolina Army National Guard. She wished him farewell in a ceremony in mid-June with about 200 soldiers at The Citadel, a military college in Charleston.
“He’s always been my rock,” Haley said.
“We have both lived a life of service, and so when he goes off to deploy, my support is completely with him. If I happen to be running for president, his support is completely with me,” she added.
Haley and her husband have been together for more than 25 years, and he frequently attended her candidacy rallies. The former UN ambassador often discussed being married to a member of the armed forces; her husband joined the National Guard in the middle of the 2000s, The Hill reported.
During Haley’s first stint as governor of Palmetto State, he was initially sent overseas.
Haley first spoke about the US having a female president during a meet and greet at a Columbia barbeque restaurant last week….reports Asian Lite News
Fresh out of her stinging loss in the Nevada primary, a confident Nikki Haley has reiterated that the US will have a female president in 2024 — either her or Vice President Kamala Harris — both Indian-Americans.
“This is about the fact that we are going to have a female President of the US. It will either be me or it will be Kamala Harris,” the Republican presidential aspirant told Fox News @ Night on Thursday.
Following her first Republican presidential debate last year, Haley had said that the thought of having Harris as president “should send a chill up every American spine”, adding that a vote for President Joe Biden is a vote for Harris.
Haley first spoke about the US having a female president during a meet and greet at a Columbia barbeque restaurant last week.
“We will have a female president of the US,” Haley told a gathering of about 100 people at Doc’s BBQ, which booed when she said, “the hard truth is it’s going to be me or Kamala Harris”.
According to a Morning Consult survey, 33 per cent of voters said they hold a positive view of Haley, while 40 per cent said they have an unfavorable view of her, which equates to a net favorability rating of negative 7.
As for Harris, 37 per cent of respondents held a favorable view, while 56 had a negative view of her, resulting in a net favorability rating of negative 19, a Newsweek report said, citing the survey.
Speaking to Fox News, Haley said her rival and Republican frontrunner Donald Trump cannot win the general election, moments after the US Supreme Court finished hearing arguments in a landmark legal case to decide whether the former president can be on the ballot in November’s election.
“He can’t win a general election. That’s a fact. We lost in 2018. We lost in 2020. We lost in 2022… he;s got a year’s worth of court cases yet… Everything he touches is chaos, and we continue to lose,” Haley told the news channel.
Having voted for Trump twice and “proud” to serve in his administration as UN ambassador, Haley asked, “How many more times do we have to lose before we realise that is the problem?”
The lone woman in the 2024 White House race said that the US cannot be a country in disarray in a world on fire and go through four more years of chaos. “We won’t survive it,” she said.
Trump won Nevada’s Republican caucuses after being the only major candidate to participate and said that Haley continuing with the 2024 presidential run “hurts” the party as well as the country.
Addressing reporters outside his Mar-a-Lago residence on Thursday, the septuagenarian highlighted Haley’s losses in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada.
“I don’t know why she continues. I don’t really care if she continues… but let her continue. We have a big win coming up, as you know, in South Carolina, and the polls are indicating that we’re through the roof on that one”.
Haley ran in Nevada’s symbolic state-run presidential primary on Tuesday where voters chose ‘none of these candidates’ over her.
While speaking to Fox News, she insisted after these results that the whole thing was “rigged” for Trump.
“Nevada — it’s such a scam. They were supposed to have a primary. Trump rigged it so the GOP chairman — who’s been indicted — would go and create a caucus,” Haley said.
Following her Nevada loss, Haley said her campaign is in “full steam ahead in South Carolina and beyond”.
Trump’s Nevada victory gives him all 26 of the state’s delegates, and the 77-year-old needs to accrue 1,215 delegates to formally clinch GOP’s presidential nomination.
Haley, banking on New Hampshire’s independent spirit, aims for an upset or a close defeat to dent Trump’s stronghold on the Republican landscape….reports Asian Lite News
Nikki Haley, the prominent GOP figure challenging Donald Trump’s dominance, remains resolute ahead of the New Hampshire primary, vowing to stay in the race despite pressure from Trump’s camp to exit gracefully in the event of a significant loss.
Haley, banking on New Hampshire’s independent spirit, aims for an upset or a close defeat to dent Trump’s stronghold on the Republican landscape. Defiant against Trump’s dismissal, Haley asserts her candidacy against the former president, while Trump expresses confidence in his inevitable nomination victory, regardless of Haley’s actions.
Despite mounting pressure, Haley remains undeterred, focused on her campaign and unwilling to discuss defeat.
Haley recently requested Secret Service protection citing “multiple issues,” the BBC reported. She discussed the request for protection in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Monday.
“We’ve had multiple issues. It’s not going to stop me from doing what I need to do,” she said after a campaign event in Aiken, South Carolina.
“When you do something like this, you get threats. It’s just the reality. That’s not going to deter me. Does it mean we have to put a few more bodies around this? Yes, that’s fine,” she told the paper.
Haley, who has been urged by the former President Trump and his backers to exit the race and unify the party against Democrat Joe Biden, currently uses personal security while campaigning.
In addition, protesters have shown up at her campaign events to slam her support for Israel and Ukraine.
“At the end of the day, we’re going to go out there and touch every hand, we’re going to answer every question, we’re going to make sure that we are there and doing everything that we need to,” she said.
The White House hopeful has been a target of “swatting” attempts with the recent one on New Year’s Day when a hoax call was made to law enforcement agencies, saying Haley’s daughter had been shot and was lying in a pool of blood.
Trump’s absolute dominance in the Iowa primary, narrow win in New Hampshire, seems to have instilled an aura of invincibility around his primary campaign. …writes TN Ashok
Nikki Haley, the fiercest challenger to ex-president Donald Trump in the GOP 2024 primary, banks on the most unlikeliest of ally, Democrats, who might flip, to vote for her on her home turf South Carolina, to stop Trump’s bull run in the presidential race.
Nikki Haley, the former UN ambassador appointed by Trump himself, will try to slow down Trump’s seemingly inevitable march toward the GOP nomination. Haley is banking on a bloc of home state voters she’s never needed to court before, the Democrats, media reports said.
Trump’s absolute dominance in the Iowa primary, narrow win in New Hampshire, seems to have instilled an aura of invincibility around his primary campaign. Haley hopes to pierce that and salvage an sense of viability past South Carolina, and she is planning to expand her coalition beyond anti-Trump Republicans and independent-minded voters – a task that would almost certainly include at least small pockets of Democrats not sold on re-electing President Joe Biden or those willing to switch sides to try to stop Trump from getting the GOP nomination, NBC reported.
The political maths is being made more complicated by the incentive for Biden and Democrats to generate a “monster turnout” after making South Carolina the party’s first sanctioned nominating contest, and there is less evidence of any cross voting in the Palmetto State.
“Democrats do not vote in Republican primaries here, just like Republicans won’t vote in Democratic primaries,” said former South Carolina Republican Party Chairman Katon Dawson. “We tried and tried and tried, I spent money doing it. We found there was not much there.”
Haley says she does not “have to win” her home state of South Carolina but needs “momentum”. In both New Hampshire and Iowa, Haley faced criticism from opponents that she was targeting Democrats to offset her disadvantage with Republican primary voters, an idea her campaign has rejected. Officials have not, however, disputed that they are trying to expand the Republican base.
“The Republican Party has to be a story of addition again, not subtraction. Trump lost races we should have won in 2018, 2020 and 2022,” Haley spokeswoman Olivia Perez-Cubas said. “If Republicans want to start winning again, we have to start bringing in new voters, including conservatives, independents and Democrats who are fed up with Joe Biden.”
Some Republicans feel there are still three weeks between the Democrats’ primary on Saturday and the Republicans’ February 24 primary that creates a unique opportunity for Haley to pick up voters who might not ordinarily vote in a GOP primary.
In South Carolina, people can vote to take part in either party’s primary. So if a voter does not cast a ballot in the Democratic primary, Haley’s team will have three weeks to crunch the numbers and come up with a plan to target the exact set of voters who have yet to vote in the state, NBC said.
“Haley should absolutely look to turn out every voter possible in the primary, and with the democratic Presidential Primary being held three weeks prior, there should be ample time to identify those who did not vote in the primary and encourage them to vote in the Republican Primary,” said Alex Stroman, a former executive director of the South Carolina GOP.
He said South Carolina not requiring party registration “gives us the best candidates to win general elections.” Haley needs to juice turnout among those independents, moderates and true Republicans to improve on her results in New Hampshire and launch her into Michigan and then Super Tuesday states,” Stroman said referring to the March 5 round of primaries in 16 states.
Jay Parmley, executive director of the South Carolina Democratic Party, said they have heard from some Democrats planning to vote for Haley. “Yeah, we have heard that is happening. It might be smart for Haley, but it’s stupid for Democrats to vote in the Republican primary,” he said.
“She is just as bad as Donald Trump. My call to Democrats is, ‘If you didn’t vote for her as governor, why you would vote for her as the nominee.?”
“We are doing everything we can to talk to Democrats and get them to vote. Now we have some saying they may vote for Haley to try and stop Trump,” Parmley added. “That’s just stupid’.”
Haley has portrayed herself as the eager beaver politician ready to take head on the establishment in both political parties, an opportunity she has in her home state. Both the Biden and Trump camps have signalled to Haley to drop out so that they can turn their focus to a general election matchup they view as already set. On the night of the New Hampshire primary, Biden said in a statement that it is “now clear” that Trump will win the GOP nomination.
Democratic strategists say they expect many of their party’s voters to cast ballots for Biden on Saturday, making them ineligible to participate in the Republican primary three weeks later. Moreover, there’s little love lost between Haley and Democrats in the state she governed from the political right.
“There is no major effort by Democrats to vote for Nikki Haley. She was not good for us when she was governor. So there’s no need to think she would be good for us as president,” said Clay Middleton, a long-time Democratic operative who is serving as a senior adviser to the Biden campaign in South Carolina.
‘Our goal as a campaign is to make sure that we contact voters and show them, remind them, what the president has done for South Carolinians and for African Americans, in particular, and show that appreciation by voting on February 3.”
Middleton noted that Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and “a slew” of top surrogates have visited the state in recent weeks, a group that includes Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison, a South Carolina native, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif. Biden spoke at a ‘First in the Nation’ dinner Saturday in Columbia, which highlighted his decision to make South Carolina’s primary the opening contest on the party’s calendar.
With vote counting ongoing, it was unclear if Trump had secured the knockout victory to put his sole remaining challenger Nikki Haley out of the contest…reports Asian Lite News
Donald Trump won the key New Hampshire primary Tuesday, moving him ever closer to locking in the Republican presidential nomination and securing an extraordinary White House rematch with Joe Biden.
With vote counting ongoing, it was unclear if Trump had secured the knockout victory to put his sole remaining challenger Nikki Haley out of the contest.
In a speech following the vote, the former UN ambassador during Trump’s frequently chaotic presidency said the race was “far from over” and told supporters that Democrats “want” to run against her former boss.
“They know Trump is the only Republican in the country who Joe Biden can defeat,” Haley, 52, warned.
With strong turnout in the northeastern state, Haley had hoped for a major upset. But US broadcasters quickly projected her defeat as first tallies came in.
Donald Trump was already the runaway leader in national Republican polling, despite two impeachments as president, and four criminal trials hanging over him since leaving office.
While Haley repeatedly questioned the 77-year-old’s mental fitness and warned another Trump presidency would bring “chaos,” polls indicate her efforts in New Hampshire created little more than a speed bump.
“I think it’s a two-person race now between Trump and Biden,” Keith Nahigian, a veteran of six presidential campaigns and former member of Trump’s transition team said.
New Hampshire was markedly more Haley-friendly than states she will subsequently face, should she stay in the race, and continuing into February will be a tough sell without a win or at least a narrow loss.
Her next must-win stop will be her home state South Carolina. Trump won a crushing victory in the first Republican contest in Iowa last week, with Haley a distant third.
What was once a crowded field of 14 candidates narrowed to a one-on-one match-up on Sunday after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis dropped out, following his second-place Iowa finish.
No Republican has ever won both opening contests and not ultimately secured the party’s nomination. Donald Trump did little actual campaigning in New Hampshire. However, his message — a mixture of personal grievance and right-wing culture war firing his base — has delivered seemingly insurmountable polling leads.
One of Trump’s complaints has been his false claim that Democrats are allowed to vote in the Republican contest in New Hampshire. However, independents are allowed to vote and Haley had hoped they would revolt against Trump, seeing her as the moderate alternative.
She spent the week hammering the message, backed by polling, that most Americans do not want to see a Trump-Biden rematch. “Nikki Haley’s supporters will surely feel that Tuesday night in New Hampshire was a reasonably good night. But once the relative shine of the Granite State result wears off… all but the most ardent Haley supporters will be looking through a glass darkly,” said Aron Solomon, a political analyst for legal marketing agency Amplify.
New Hampshire Democrats also voted for their standard-bearer Tuesday, defying a national party order to hold the primary later. Biden did not file candidate paperwork after a row between national and state party officials.
Broadcasters projected that Biden won as a “write-in” candidate, even though it was not an official Democratic Party primary following the row. Biden marked the day by campaigning alongside Vice President Kamala Harris in Virginia at a rally for abortion rights.
