Donald Trump savages Nikki Haley in speech after winning over half the vote in New Hampshire’s primary
Donald Trump is firmly on track to win the Republican nomination, but a defiant Nikki Haley has vowed to stay in the race.
Donald Trump scored a critical victory in his race for the White House on Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT), winning more than 50 per cent of the vote in New Hampshire’s Republican primary against a defiant Nikki Haley who has vowed to press on in her quest to derail the former president’s White House bid.
Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, the only significant challenger to the former president left in the race, told cheering supporters the race was “far from over” and demanded Donald Trump face off against her in a debate for the first time.
Mr Trump, flanked by family members and former competitor turned supporter Vivek Ramaswamy, blasted Haley in a fiery victory speech as an “impostor who had claimed a victory”, implying his former United Nations ambassador during his administration should drop out of the race as Florida governor Ron DeSantis did last week after Iowa.
“She had a very bad night… Ron [DeSantis] beat her also, you know, Ron came in second and he left, she came in third and she’s still hanging around,” he told supporters in Nashua, New Hampshire, referring to Haley’s third place finish in last week’s Iowa caucuses.
Mr Trump was poised to win around 55 per cent of the roughly 320,000 votes, a record turnout, expected to have been cast in New Hampshire’s primary, compared with Ms Haley’s estimated 45 per cent, according to the New York Times.
Ms Haley had staked her campaign on a strong showing in a state that is wealthier than Iowa, whose electorate included a large share of independent voters to whom Ms Haley’s more moderate brand of Republicanism was supposed to appeal.
Addressing her supporters around 20 minutes after polling station closed at 8.20pm local time, Ms Haley congratulated Donald Trump yet defied calls for her to withdraw from the race, which polls suggest will become more challenging for her at the next major Republican primary in South Carolina in late February, where Mr Trump leads convincingly.
“We got close to half the vote, we still got a way to go but we keep moving up,” she told supporters in her speech, delivered 20 minutes or so after polling stations closed across the tiny north-eastern state with a population of 1.4 million.
“The first party to retire its 80-year-old candidate is going to be the party that wins this election,” she added.
Mr Trump’s second victory put him firmly on the track to winning the Republican Party nomination for president, setting him up for a likely rematch with president Joe Biden, who easily won his party’s primary contest with more than 70 per cent of the vote.
No Republican candidate has ever won both the Iowa and New Hampshire and failed to clinch the nomination, a fact that will further fuel speculation over who Mr Trump will pick as his vice presidential running mate, a decision he could leave until near the Republican national convention in July.
Enthusiasm for Mr Trump’s comeback, apparently supercharged by anger among his supporters over four criminal indictments he is facing primarily related to his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election, was clear at polling booths in and around Concord, the state’s capital and third largest city, ahead of the vote.
Asset manager Myles Tarbel, born and raised in Concord, said he didn’t want “an 80 year old grandpa [in Joe Biden] running the country”, and the indictments against Mr Trump “felt like the product of a political machine and deep state against him”.
“Before he became president people worried that he’d be trigger happy, but he proved the opposite, so voting for him is a safer world and a better economy,” he told The Australian, flanked by his young son Knox outside a polling station at Christa McAuliffe School in Concord.
Healthcare worker Susan, who declined to give her surname, backed Joe Biden, but suggested Nikki Haley, 52, had alienated many voters with her push for mental competency tests for politicians aged over 75.
“I’m over 65, I work with women that are 15 years my senior, and I think it’s wrong to just assume because someone if of a certain age they don’t have capacity, intelligence and fortitude… it’s damaged her here, this is the second oldest state in the country [by median age],” she told The Australian.
Around 15 kilometres out of Concord Trump supporter Elaine Costello, 75, told The Australian the indictments against him were “all bullsh*t” and despaired about the direction of the US whoever won the November poll.
“The government is out of control; I bought my first house when I was 19 and we planted a flag pole for 50 years now I don’t care anymore, I really don’t trust this country anymore,” she added.
“I lost too many friends in Vietnam and we’re gunna end up in another war in Ukraine under Biden,” she said.
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