Former President Donald Trump, the leading GOP candidate for president and likely GOP nominee, looks to continue his perfect streak on Saturday night in the Palmetto State with a blowout victory over former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in her home state.
Any loss for Haley would be utterly embarrassing, as she served for years as governor of South Carolina before joining Trump’s administration as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. But polling in recent weeks suggests Trump could be headed for a landslide victory, one that would come on the heels of wins a month ago in both Iowa’s caucuses and New Hampshire’s primaries.
Haley’s team is desperate to project some kind of a pathway out of South Carolina, vowing she will fight on through at least Super Tuesday. But a loss here could be the end of the road for her and make staying in the campaign even more difficult. In a contested GOP presidential primary, no candidate in modern history has ever won all three of the first major contests–Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina–so Trump would set a new record to add to his many with a win on Saturday. Trump also won the Nevada GOP cancuses because he ran essentially uncontested there after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis dropped out post-Iowa and endorsed Trump.
The Haley campaign says it is launching ads on television in Super Tuesday states to try to project strength, even in the face of expected embarrassment on Saturday. As the map expands beyond the early states from here, too, Trump is beginning to eye possibly mathematically eliminating Haley from contention as soon as mid-March, if he can keep this winning streak going. As soon as Haley finally drops out of the race–she has no pathway to the nomination at this stage, so continuing to run is futile anyway–Trump will formally become the presumptive nominee ahead of the GOP convention, which is scheduled to take place in Milwaukee in July. The GOP convention is where he will formally become the GOP nominee for president again for the third straight election.
Polls close in South Carolina at 7:00 p.m. ET, and results are expected soon after. Follow along here on Breitbart News for live updates with results and analysis throughout the evening.
