If there were any doubts about whether the Republican presidential primary was about to end, they were dispelled by voters in South Carolina on Saturday evening.
Donald J. Trump defeated Nikki Haley by around 20 percentage points and achieved around 60 percent of the vote when almost all votes were counted.
It’s not an overwhelming landslide. In fact, Mr. Trump has underperformed slightly in recent polls, reflecting Ms. Haley’s strong turnout in Democratic-leaning metropolitan areas. Their strength may even be due to voters who want to support President Biden in the general election, as anyone could vote in the South Carolina primary, regardless of party.
But this isn’t just any South Carolina area code: This is Ms. Haley’s home state. Even losing candidates have typically managed to win their home states. Ted Cruz and John Kasich did this against Mr. Trump in 2016. John McCain (2000), Howard Dean (2004), John Edwards (2004), Wesley Clark (2004), Newt Gingrich (2012) and others have all won. For many of these candidates, winning their home state was their only victory. On Saturday, Ms. Haley didn’t come close.
A decisive loss in the home state says everything you need to know (and you probably already knew). It confirms that she trails Mr. Trump by a wide margin nationally — a margin that made a home state victory impossible. It belies any notion that greater name recognition would make up for their deficit in the polls. And it has robbed her of her last, best chance to gain even a hint of momentum before Super Tuesday, when nearly half of the Republican National Convention’s delegates will be awarded.
As a result, this race is about to come to an end – and soon. Oddly enough, it’s not the final vote count in South Carolina that explains why the race could end so quickly. It’s the number of delegates: Trump 44, Haley 0, six more not yet called.
You read that right: Mr. Trump won almost all of South Carolina’s delegates with just 60 percent of the vote. That’s because Republican primary rules allow states to award most or even all of their delegates to the winner. And in South Carolina, he captured almost every delegate, winning the state and five of its seven congressional districts – with the final two still pending at this point. (In my opinion, it looks like Mr. Trump and Ms. Haley will win one each, resulting in a 3-3 split among these six outstanding delegates.)
There will be many more opportunities for Mr. Trump to win all or almost all of a state’s delegates. California is one of those possibilities. Anything over 50 percent of the vote would give him every one of the state’s 169 delegates. Not every state has rules so favorable to the winner, but since Trump is doing so well nationally — he leads the polls by about 60 percentage points — no set of rules would prevent Trump from getting a majority of available delegates.
Taken together, Mr. Trump could easily win more than 90 percent of the delegates on Super Tuesday on March 5, when nearly half of all delegates to the Republican National Convention will be awarded. That puts him within a whisker of winning the nomination and could secure the nomination in the next week or two – before his first criminal trial is scheduled to begin in New York.
Source link
2024-02-25 06:15:43
www.nytimes.com