Haley managed to eke out a win in Vermont, denying Trump a Super Tuesday sweep.
Former president Donald Trump nearly swept the Super Tuesday primaries with a string of victories in significant states, continuing his seemingly inexorable march to the GOP nomination and leaving his lone remaining rival, Nikki Haley, with virtually no path forward.
By late Tuesday night, Trump had won the Republican presidential contests in at least twelve of the Super Tuesday states: Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Maine, Alabama, Massachusetts, Arkansas, Colorado, Minnesota, and the delegate-rich states of California and Texas.
Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, meanwhile, earned her first — and likely only — win of the night in Vermont.
Results from caucuses in Alaska and Utah were still outstanding around 11:30 p.m. ET.
Tuesday’s outcome is likely to serve as the beginning of the end of Haley’s campaign, which had for weeks pinned its hopes on Super Tuesday as her best chance to finally eat into Trump’s delegate lead.
Trump celebrated his wins in a speech at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday evening, refusing to even mention Haley as he shifted into general-election mode with a series of attacks on President Biden.
“They call it Super Tuesday for a reason and the pundits tell me there has never been one like this,” he said, adding it had been “an amazing night and an amazing day.”
Haley did not address supporters in a speech on Tuesday night; instead campaign spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas issued a statement saying the Haley camp is “honored to have received the support of millions of Americans across the country today, including in Vermont where Nikki became the first Republican woman to win two presidential primary contests.”
“Unity is not achieved by simply claiming ‘we’re united,'” Perez-Cubas said. “Today, in state after state, there remains a large block of Republican primary voters who are expressing deep concerns about Donald Trump. That is not the unity our party needs for success. Addressing those voters’ concerns will make the Republican Party and America better.”
The Super Tuesday contests will award 865 delegates, or a third of all available delegates.
The winner of the GOP presidential nomination will need to earn a total of 1,215 delegates. Ahead of Super Tuesday, Trump had already secured 273 delegates to Haley’s 43 delegates.
Even if Trump won all of the Super Tuesday delegates, he would find himself with 1,141 delegates, meaning he will not mathematically eliminate Haley tonight.
Haley’s losses in North Carolina, Virginia, Maine, Massachusetts, and Minnesota are a harsh reality check to the campaign’s theory that she could have an edge in states with open or semi-open primaries and those that have a large contingent of college-educated voters, suburban voters, and independents.
Virginia exit polling from NBC News showed Trump leading among men, women and voters above the age of 30, as well as voters who identify as “conservative” and those who do not have a college degree. Haley, meanwhile, won over the majority of college graduates and voters who identify as “moderate.”
Seventy-eight percent of voters said Trump can “likely” beat Biden in a general election, while just 55 percent said the same of Haley.
Despite outlasting a crowded field of Republican challengers to take Trump on one-on-one, Haley has managed to win just two primary contests: Washington, D.C., and Vermont.
She previously survived eight consecutive losses to the former president in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, the Virgin Islands, Michigan, Missouri, and Idaho. On Monday night, Trump once again defeated Haley, this time in North Dakota.
After Tuesday, there are still another 26 states and four territories that will vote, up until the final nominating contests on June 4 ahead of the Republican convention in July.
In what is perhaps a show of optimism — or a commitment to remain in the race past Super Tuesday — Haley’s campaign unveiled its Louisiana leadership team this week ahead of the state’s March 23 primary.
Trump, for his part, had been acting the part of the presumptive nominee for weeks, touting potential vice-presidential picks in interviews and calling on Biden to debate him, even though he declined to participate in any of the RNC-sponsored GOP primary debates.
Tuesday’s results effectively ensure there will be a rematch in November between Trump and Biden, despite polling repeatedly finding that was an outcome few voters wanted, a fact that Haley had hammered home in recent weeks.
Biden has faced no formidable primary challengers and handily won the party’s nominating contests in Vermont, Virginia, Iowa, North Carolina, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Maine, Massachusetts, Arkansas, Alabama, Colorado, Texas, Minnesota and Utah on Tuesday, according to the AP, despite a progressive effort to encourage voters in several states to vote “uncommitted” in protest of Biden’s support for Israel in its war against Hamas.
Absent a real primary challenge, Biden has instead trained his focus on attacking Trump for months. To distract from the president’s own abysmal approval ratings, Biden campaign aides are working aggressively to paint the general election as a referendum on Trump and all the chaos that surrounds him.
The president is also not weighed down by exorbitant legal costs, as Trump is: New campaign-finance filings show Biden’s campaign ended January with almost $56 million on hand, while Trump’s campaign lagged behind with $30 million.
The legal bills keep piling up for Trump: His PAC spent nearly $3 million fighting his various legal challenges last month, on top of the $50 million it spent last year.
This post will be updated as results come in.