Former US President Donald Trump has won the primary election for the Republican presidential nomination in the state of South Carolina. The AP news agency and the broadcaster CNN reported this unanimously on Saturday evening (local time), citing their own forecasts. Trump’s rival Nikki Haley, who was once governor of the conservative state in the southeast of the USA, suffered a defeat as expected. Trump and Haley fought another duel in South Carolina for their party’s nomination for the presidential election on November 5th. Anyone who wants to become a presidential candidate in the USA must first prevail in internal party primaries. The candidates are then officially chosen at party conferences in the summer. The Republican nomination convention will take place in mid-July.
Haley, who is considered to be more politically moderate and rhetorically much more moderate than Trump, had hoped for a home advantage in South Carolina. The 52-year-old was born here and was the first woman to hold the state governorship from 2011 to 2017. South Carolina is roughly the size of Austria and has more than five million inhabitants. Around a quarter of the population is black. The South Carolina primary was the first vote in a southern US state. Trump was already almost 30 percentage points ahead of Haley in polls in South Carolina. In national polls he leads by an even clearer margin.
The former US ambassador to the United Nations Haley is given little chance of ultimately prevailing against Trump. Nevertheless, she has so far refused to admit defeat. Trump also won the previous primaries in the states of Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. Trump supporters have long been urging Haley to drop out of the party’s internal race. Before the vote in South Carolina, Haley made it clear once again that the race was far from over and that she did not want to give up. Now special attention is on March 5th, the so-called Super Tuesday. On this day, Republican primaries will be held simultaneously in 15 states.