Presidential contender Nikki Haley scored a victory in Vermont on Super Tuesday, but it was not enough to fend off former President Donald Trump.
Trump appeared to claim 15 of 16 states up for grabs on Super Tuesday but is still below the threshold needed to secure the GOP nomination for president.
The former president is projected to win Texas along with numerous other states in the 16-state Super Tuesday election but is not likely to pull enough delegates to secure the GOP nomination outright. President Biden also faces challenges as voter turnout sours.
Biden secured an estimated 64% of Democrat voters in Texas, outpacing Trump, who scored just 551 delegates in the deep red state. Trump did score a 60-point advantage over Haley in the contest.
Trump called America “like a third world country” in a victory speech from Mar-A-Lago.
“We’re going to make America great again, greater than ever before,” he said.
In addition to her Vermont victory, Haley also picked up the Washington, D.C., region, marking just her second victory.
“We’re honored to have received the support of millions of Americans across the country today, including in Vermont,” Haley national spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas said in a statement, as reported by Axios.
Final tallies were far from being completed as of midnight on Wednesday, but early returns suggest that the nation will be faced with a rematch of Trump vs. Biden in November. Biden collected all but five delegates on Super Tuesday, adding 812 delegates to his nomination count.
Trump added 751 to his count while calling the Biden administration out for inflation and a sketchy stock market.
“[Biden] is the worst president in the history of our country,” Trump said in a speech on election night. He claimed that on election night 325,000 unlawful migrants were flown into the country by the Biden administration.
“We had the safest border in history,” Trump said of his time as president. Now, “Our cities are being overrun by migrant crime,” and “the world is laughing at us,” he claimed.
Trump pointed out that the only “tar” refinery is in Houston.
“We have a great Republican party … and we’re going to have unity,” Trump added.
“Success will bring unity to our country,” he declared, contending, “Every single [demographic] group was doing better than ever before” during his presidency.
Yet Haley’s campaign positioned her victory in Vermont as proof that “there remains a large block of Republican primary voters who are expressing deep concerns about Donald Trump,” adding, “That is not the unity our party needs for success.”
Despite Haley’s victories in Vermont and Washington, D.C., it remains likely that Trump will be nominated as the GOP nominee and set up a face-off against Biden in November.
