Donald Trump projected to defeat Nikki Haley in her home state of South Carolina

Neo­fas­cist Don­ald Trump’s march towards a third con­sec­u­tive Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion con­tin­ued tonight with an easy win in South Car­oli­na’s 2024 GOP pri­ma­ry, where he cruised past Nik­ki Haley in her home state.

Net­works called the pri­ma­ry for Trump almost as soon as polls had closed.

“That is real­ly some­thing,” Trump bragged to a gath­er­ing of his fol­low­ers in Colum­bia. “This was a lit­tle soon­er than we anticipated.”

Haley, mean­while, refused to throw in the towel.

“I’m a woman of my word. I’m not giv­ing up this fight when a major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans dis­ap­prove of both Trump and Biden,” she said.

“In the next ten days, twen­ty-one states and ter­ri­to­ries will speak. They have the right to a real choice, not a Sovi­et-style elec­tion with only one candidate.”

“And I have a duty to give them that choice.”

With 23.91% report­ing, Trump had 60.15% of the vote statewide (269,541 votes) and Haley had 39.21% (175,729 votes). Flori­da Gov­er­nor Ron DeSan­tis, who bowed out after fail­ing to do well in Iowa, drew 1,611 votes, and four oth­er now-with­drawn can­di­dates each had a few hun­dred votes apiece.

Haley is best­ing Trump in three areas with­in South Carolina:

• Charleston Coun­ty, where she has 61.89% of the vote
• Beau­fort Coun­ty, where she has 56.29% of the vote
• Rich­land Coun­ty, where she has 58.97% of the vote

Beau­fort Coun­ty is “one of the South’s fastest-grow­ing coun­ties, pri­mar­i­ly because of devel­op­ment south of the Broad Riv­er clus­tered along the U.S. High­way 278 cor­ri­dor,” its Wikipedia entry notes. “The coun­ty’s north­ern por­tions have also grown steadi­ly, due in part to the strong fed­er­al mil­i­tary pres­ence around the city of Beau­fort.” Beau­fort Coun­ty also encom­pass­es Hilton Head Island.

Rich­land Coun­ty is home to the state cap­i­tal, Colum­bia. It is locat­ed in the geo­graph­ic cen­ter of the state and has a pop­u­la­tion of 416,147.

Charleston Coun­ty, as its name sug­gests, is home to the state’s largest city, Charleston. Locat­ed on the coast, it has a pop­u­la­tion of 408,235.

Because South Car­oli­na is a “win­ner take all” state for the Repub­li­cans, Trump will get all of the del­e­gates despite not win­ning any­where close to all of the vote. South Car­oli­na has fifty Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion del­e­gates: 10 base at-large / 21 re: 7 con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts / 3 par­ty / 16 bonus.

This isn’t the first time Trump has pre­vailed in a con­test­ed Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry in South Car­oli­na. In 2016, Trump best­ed Mar­co Rubio, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, John Kasich, and Ben Car­son, earn­ing a plu­ral­i­ty of 32.51% of the vote. Though over two-third of the Repub­li­can vot­ers who turned out in that 2016 pri­ma­ry chose anoth­er can­di­date, Trump nev­er­the­less walked away with all fifty del­e­gates then too, because of the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s “win­ner take all” rules.

Last year, Repub­li­cans like Chris Sununu argued that if the Repub­li­can field could be nar­rowed, Trump’s path to the nom­i­na­tion could be thwarted.

“Pro­vid­ed the field shrinks by Iowa and New Hamp­shire, Mr. Trump los­es,” Sununu mem­o­rably declared August 21st, 2023 essay for The New York Times (If Repub­li­cans Nar­row the Field, We Will Beat Trump). “He will always have his die-hard base, but the major­i­ty is up for grabs. Can­di­dates who seize on the oppor­tu­ni­ty and present a clear con­trast to the for­mer pres­i­dent will earn the votes.”

The field did shrink by Iowa and New Hamp­shire. Chris Christie, Doug Bur­gum, Tim Scott, Mike Pence, Lar­ry Elder, Per­ry John­son, Will Hurd, and Fran­cis Suarez all bowed out before Iowa held its cau­cus­es. By the time the New Hamp­shire pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry was held, Nik­ki Haley was the only remain­ing Trump rival.

It did­n’t mat­ter. Trump has won every con­test thus far, prov­ing Sununu wrong.

Haley has the resources to keep going, however.

She “has ben­e­fit­ed from a self-replen­ish­ing assem­bly line of rich anti-Trump donors who are hap­py to con­tin­ue financ­ing what some pri­vate­ly con­cede is a futile effort,” a trio of New York Times polit­i­cal reporters observed a few days ago. They gave Repub­li­can strate­gist Kevin Mad­den the final quote in their arti­cle: “Can­di­dates don’t run out of rea­sons to run… They run out of resources.”

While Trump and Haley spoke in South Car­oli­na, Pres­i­dent Biden was in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., host­ing the nation’s gov­er­nors at a black-tie dinner.

“We have a lot to do. The thing that makes me feel good about hav­ing the gov­er­nors here is we have a tra­di­tion of doing things togeth­er,” Biden said.

“We fight like hell, we make sure that we get our points across. At the end of the day, we know who we work for. The objec­tive is to get things done.”

“Pol­i­tics have got­ten too bit­ter,” Biden added, per­haps allud­ing to the tox­i­c­i­ty Don­ald Trump pro­motes. “Pol­i­tics has got­ten too per­son­al. It’s just not like it was.” Biden not­ed that he served at times when the par­ties had stark differences.