Nikki Haley scores her first victory against Trump in the District of Columbia primaries

The capital of the United States has always been hostile territory for Donald Trump. Joe Biden won the 2020 election against the then president with 92% of the vote. In general, the District of Columbia is markedly blue, the color of Democrats. The Republican Party held its presidential primaries on Sunday in a single voting center, a room at the Madison Hotel, in downtown Washington, D.C. With low turnout, Nikki Haley scored her first — and perhaps last — victory against Trump. It’s more of a symbolic victory, but it gives her a boost ahead of Super Tuesday.

In a city of nearly 700,000 residents, there are just 23,000 registered Republican voters. Although voting by mail is not allowed, turnout at the Madison Hotel on Sunday was low. Only a few dozen voters were filling out their ballots in the afternoon. At the door, a woman was handing out leaflets in support of David Stuckenberg, a businessman and former military pilot who’s a virtual unknown in the presidential race. Another woman, dressed in a red tracksuit and a Trump cap, was sitting in a folding chair looking at her cell phone. At a table inside, two volunteers from Nikki Haley’s campaign were handing out stickers (or, at least, they had stickers to hand out, but little demand).

The District of Columbia primaries only award 19 delegates for the Republican National Convention. On Saturday, Trump won 122 (all those at stake) in the Idaho, Missouri and Michigan caucuses, and on Super Tuesday, there are 874 Republican delegates in 15 states up for grabs. For this reason, the capital’s primaries usually garners little interest. Voter intention polls aren’t even carried out.

Even so, the District of Columbia is probably the constituency where the most delegates are awarded in proportion to Republican members, since the distribution takes into account the population. In New Hampshire, for example, Trump needed 176,000 votes to win 12 delegates. In Washington, a few thousand are enough to win 19. The Republican primaries in the capital are closed, so only the 23,000 registered Republicans can vote. Furthermore, turnout is usually very low. In 2020, only 1,559 people voted; in 2016, that figure was 2,839; in 2020, it was around 5,300, and in 2008, about 6,200. Obviously, the District of Columbia does not set trends.

The capital’s voting began on Friday and that same day, in another room of the same hotel, Nikki Haley gave a rally. On Sunday, however, the candidates didn’t even stay in town to wait for the results. Nikki Haley chose to campaign in the states that are voting on Tuesday, while Trump chose to rest after his rallies on Saturday, which were filled with numerous lapses, errors and disjointed statements. Once again, Trump mistakenly called Barack Obama the president, instead of his successor, Joe Biden.

Under Republican Party rules, the candidate who obtains more than 50% of the votes in the District of Columbia primaries is awarded 19 delegates. If no candidate obtains more than 50% of the vote, the delegates are allocated proportionally among the candidates who exceed the 15% threshold. But with only two candidates in the race, there was no real possibility that the delegates would be proportionally awarded. A handful of votes were, however, cast for candidates who withdrew from the race, but were still on the ballot, such as Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie and Vivek Ramaswamy.

Trump won the District of Columbia primary during his 2020 re-election bid, when he faced no other contender. But at the vote four years earlier, he came in third place, behind Florida Senator Marco Rubio and former Ohio governor John Kasich. He only obtained 13.8% of the votes and was awarded no delegates. The District of Columbia was one of three primaries Rubio won in his failed 2016 bid for the White House. Mitt Romney and John McCain won the city’s primaries in 2012 and 2008, respectively, before securing the Republican Party nomination.

There is little love for Trump in the capital. The former president criticizes the city at every opportunity, a sport practiced by many other U.S. politicians as well. The Trump campaign issued a statement shortly after Haley’s victory, sarcastically congratulating her for being named “Queen of the Swamp by the lobbyists and DC insiders that want to protect the failed status quo.” Republicans call Washington “the swamp” to insinuate that it is filled with corruption, taking advantage of the fact that it is partly built on an actual swamp.

Haley’s campaign turned the argument around: “It’s not surprising that Republicans closest to Washington dysfunction are rejecting Donald Trump and all his chaos,” Haley spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas said in a statement, pointing out that Haley is the first woman to win a Republican primary in history.

The race for the Republican nomination will make another minor stop before Super Tuesday. On Monday, North Dakota will hold caucuses. A total of 29 delegates are up for grabs, and Trump is expected to take them on. The following day is Super Tuesday, where according to all polls, Trump is set to show that his lead over Haley is insurmountable, despite her win in the District of Columbia.

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