NEARING END, A (SMALL) VICTORY FOR NIKKI HALEY. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has slogged through the Republican primary schedule — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, Michigan — without a single victory. Now, she has one. On Sunday night, Haley won the District of Columbia Republican primary and, with it, 19 delegates to the GOP convention. Her campaign was, of course, happy — finally, a win — but the truth is, it seemed pretty subdued. “It’s not surprising the Republicans closest to Washington dysfunction are rejecting Donald Trump and all his chaos,” spokeswoman Olivia Perez-Cubas said in a press release, noting that Haley is now “the first woman to win a Republican primary in United States history.”
Trump supporters quickly mocked Haley for winning in “the swamp.” The deep-blue city of Washington has never voted for Trump in any election. Marco Rubio won the 2016 GOP primary in the nation’s capital, while Democrats Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden absolutely trounced Trump in the 2016 and 2020 general elections. Haley now joins the group of those who have defeated Trump in Washington.
Washington looms so large in the political conversation that it’s possible some people do not realize how small it is. Washington’s population is 678,972, as estimated by the Census Bureau, which makes it about 15,000 people smaller than Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Unlike Oklahoma City, Washington is almost entirely Democratic — not just mostly Democratic, but nearly unanimously Democratic.
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That’s what made the Republican primary results so tiny. Haley won the primary with 1,274 votes to Trump’s 676. There was a scattering of other votes — Ron DeSantis got 38, Chris Christie 18, Vivek Ramaswamy 15, David Stuckenberg 8, and Ryan Binkley 1. Altogether, the total vote in the Washington Republican presidential primary was 2,030. Compare that to the 127,300 votes cast in the city’s Democratic primary for mayor back in 2022.
The GOP primary was so small that there weren’t multiple polling places around the city. There was only one place to vote, the Madison Hotel downtown, and voting was held over three days ending Sunday night. Normally, you can break down a vote by precinct or ward, but this was too small for that.
Interest in the Washington GOP primary has declined over the years. In 2008, when John McCain won, there were roughly 6,200 votes cast. In 2012, when Mitt Romney won, there were 5,200. In 2016, when Rubio won, there were 2,800. And now, there were 2,030 when Haley won. The trend appears headed toward zero.
Trump supporters can say the swamp did this or the swamp did that, but the fact is, almost nobody in the swamp bothered to vote for Haley, or Trump, or anybody else in the GOP race. In winning Washington, Haley received 1/234th of the votes she received in South Carolina, 1/110th of the votes she received in New Hampshire, and 1/16th of the votes she received in a miserable blizzard in Iowa.
But a win is a win, and now, Haley has won something in her run for president. Now comes Super Tuesday, with contests in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and American Samoa. It’s not clear how every race will go, but Haley has not predicted victory in any of them, and there seems little doubt Trump will prevail in nearly all, or perhaps all of them.
Haley has been saying for some time that she has only planned her campaign to go through Super Tuesday. In South Carolina, where she lost her home-state primary to Trump by 20 points, she pointedly declined to say she was in the race until the very end. She could point to the 2016 precedent of Trump opponents staying in the Republican primary race after Super Tuesday — the race did not end until May 3 of that year — but Trump’s main opponent, Ted Cruz, won a significant number of races. It seems impossible for Haley to match that now. So, it appears likely that Super Tuesday will be Haley’s last stand.
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