If the judges, whether supreme or ordinary, do not have a hand in it, Donald Trump is traveling towards the Republican nomination for the White House at full speed. The former president tycoon did what no aspiring Republican who was not an incumbent president had ever managed to do: win the first two primaries in a row, Iowa and the New Hampshire, States that are very different from each other. Trump clearly beat his rival Nikki Haleyin a race now reduced to a duel – at the beginning, there were a dozen -, after the retirement of the governor of Florida on Sunday Ron DeSantiswho gave his support to the former president (of whom he is a younger and more unpleasant clone).
The former governor of South Carolina assures that it intends to go ahead: on February 24th, the circus of primaries will stop in his state. Assuming she actually gets there, a defeat there, where Trump is now clearly ahead in the polls, would be for her the terminus. The Nevada caucuses, which are the next stop, February 8, are on the tycoon’s prerogative card.
In New Hampshire, Trump had almost 55% of the vote, Haley just over 43%. The gap between the two was not as abysmal as in Iowa – over thirty points – and was lower than the polls, which predicted 20%, but it is still clear. The Republicans went to the polls around 300 thousand, in one of the smallest and least populous states in the Union – 24 thousand square kilometers, 1,380,000 inhabitants -. According to theApHaley is running out of time to ask herself how credible alternative to the tycoon former president. The New York Times note that New Hampshire was, on paper, a more favorable state for Haley than for Trump. And the Washington Post writes that last night’s result confirms Trump’s hold on the Republican electorate and heightens doubts about Haley’s chances.
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Based on exit polls conducted yesterday by US media, half of Republican voters in the New Hampshire primaries believe that Joe Biden did not legitimately win the 2020 election and believes Trump’s recurring claims of a stolen election, despite the absence of any evidence. Republican voters’ biggest concerns are the economy, immigration, abortion and foreign policy. President Biden’s own campaign says that “Trump has all but secured the nomination.” Biden sees the tycoon a vulnerable opponent in the Presidential elections on November 5: it could alienate the vote of moderates and independents, especially if it were to suffer in the meantime a conviction in one of the many pending trials – at least six currently -. And, indeed, in national polls, Haley beats Biden more soundly than Trump.
In the Democratic field, where the primaries were a mess – the state party called them, but the federal one disavowed them, not assigning seats at the convention, and Biden had not registered -, the president obtained a good success: over half of the voters wrote their name on the ballot with their own handwriting; less than 20% voted for his rival, the congressman from Minnesota Dean Phillips, the only one on the list. The Democrats who went to the polls were just over one hundred thousand.
Among Democrats, the official start of the primary season will be in South Carolina, IL February 3. South Carolina is a state where minorities have more weight than in Iowa and New Hampshire, two essentially white states. The chairman of the New Hampshire Democrats, Ray Buckley, extolled Biden’s “overwhelming victory”: “Citizens of the Granite State turned out to the polls in large numbers to show their support for the great work done by the Biden-Harris Administration to grow the economy, protect freedoms reproductive and defend our democracy.” Phillips persists: “I’m the only one who can beat Trump.”
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The former president, speaking to Fox and his supporters, said he was “honored” by the victory and convinced that the Republican Party is “very united” behind his candidacy. Then, changing tone, she took it out on Haley (“she should leave the race” because otherwise “we should waste money instead of spending it against Biden”) and on the president. A few hours earlier, Trump had said that he would never ask anyone to step aside and that he didn’t care if his rival continued the race. After the success, he claimed: “Haley had it a bad evening, he lost and made a speech as if he had won”; and she made an insinuation, “if she won the nomination she would be investigated within 15 minutes for little things she doesn’t want to talk about”.
The tycoon also mocked the president: “We beat Biden. But who wouldn’t beat him? He can’t put two words together, he can’t walk.” On stage with him were former rivals Vivek Ramaswamyentrepreneur, e Tim Scott, senator from South Carolina. For Ramaswamy, Haley must leave, because “the primaries end here”.
The former governor congratulated the tycoon, but was combative: “Trump’s coronation would be a victory for Biden. And South Carolina doesn’t want a coronation, it wants an election… The worst kept secret in politics is how much Democrats want to run against Trump: they know he’s the only Republican in the country that Biden can defeat“, because it generates chaos. “Most Americans don’t want a rematch between Biden and Trump. The first party to retire its 80-year-old candidate will win,” predicts Haley, 52. It is perhaps true. But Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats seem willing to scrap their ‘old glories’.