Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley won the first GOP presidential nomination race on Sunday. In Washington, D.C., initiallyNBC News projects a win would give his campaign hopes some momentum ahead of next week’s Super Tuesday races.
Haley, who defeated former President Donald Trump, has vowed for weeks to stay in the race until Super Tuesday, when 15 states and American Samoa will hold nominating contests. Trump is leading most public polls in nearly all of those states and is expected to widen his command delegation lead.
Haley got 63% of the votes, and Trump got 33%. Over 2,000 D.C. Republicans voted. As Haley received more than half of the votes, she left the district with 19 delegates.
Washington’s group of moderate Republicans, many of whom work in politics or government, is a far cry from those in other early states like South Carolina and Iowa, setting up a scenario in which Haley has her first legitimate chance to win. In the 2016 primary elections in Washington, Trump received only 14% of the vote.
Expectations on the turnout were also low, opening the door to a different scenario than any competition ever held, as the margins were expected to be slim.
“It could be anywhere between 2,000 and 6,000 voters,” GOP chairman Patrick Mara predicted in an interview with NBC News last week. “So, frankly, everyone has a chance to win here. It just depends on voter turnout and what the campaigns are doing.”
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio won the 2016 GOP primary by nearly 2,800 votes. Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, the party’s nominee in 2012, won the contest by 5,200 votes that year, and Republican nominee John McCain won by nearly 6,200 votes in 2008.
Mara said the campaigns for both Haley and Trump sent text messages and made phone calls to encourage voters before the primary, with some volunteers even going door-to-door.
The primary is controlled by local Republicans rather than the state, which is common in other nominating contests, with only one polling place at the Madison Hotel.
“It’s run by the party, it’s a different experience and we’re paying for it,” he said. “So that means Washington Republicans have to be motivated to come to a hotel in downtown DC to vote.”
According to him, Trump’s dominance in the primary states and the nomination process of the Republican party also had an impact on the low voter turnout.
“The average Washington Republican is politically savvy and more savvy than the media, they saw the coverage that told people the race was over,” Mara said.