Loading player
Nikki Haley won the Republican Party primaries in the US capital, Washington DC, on Sunday with 63 percent of the vote. It is Haley’s first victory against former President Donald Trump since the beginning of the election campaign, but it is not very relevant: Haley has already lost in the five states where the primaries were held and Trump is considered the favorite candidate in the 15 states in which voting will take place on Tuesday 5 March during the so-called “Super Tuesday”. Her victory in Washington depends a lot on the composition of the Republican Party voters in the federal district (DC stands for District of Columbia, whose territory coincides with the capital), one of the places with the highest support for the Democratic Party in the country.
Washington DC has a population of around 678 thousand inhabitants where Republicans represent less than 5 percent of registered voters, around 23 thousand people: in the 2020 elections Joe Biden won with 92 percent of the votes. Furthermore, Washington Republicans are generally more moderate and more informed than Republican electorates in other states. Many of them work in politics or the political world and have dealt with Trump during his term as president.
In the days leading up to the vote, Trump had said that if he lost in the Washington DC primaries he would ban all lobbyists who had not voted for him from entering the White House in the event of his victory in the presidential elections. He then commented on Haley’s victory by saying that she had been crowned queen “by Washington lobbyists and insiders who want to protect the failing status quo.”
Despite demonstrating that in the capital of the United States Donald Trump is not the favorite candidate of the people with whom he will then have to work if he wins the presidential elections, the outcome of the vote in Washington DC is quite irrelevant: Haley has no chance of winning the elections Republican Party primaries. Monday 4 March they are held primaries in South Dakota and Tuesday in 15 states, all places where Trump is expected to win by a landslide.
– Read also: Nikki Haley doesn’t want to withdraw from the Republican Party primaries