/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/DVI4NK43NUXBSUXOYDYAEZUANI.jpg?fit=768%2C512&ssl=1)
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 votes. In general, the District of Columbia is markedly blue, the color of Democrats. The Republican Party held its presidential primaries this Sunday in a single electoral center, a room at the Madison Hotel, in downtown Washington. With a low turnout, Nikki Haley has scored her first — and who knows if her last — victory against Trump, a rather symbolic victory, but one that gives her some oxygen. Haley has obtained 63% of the votes, but that is only 1,274 votes. Trump, while he has only achieved 676 votes in the capital, 33%.
In a city of nearly 700,000 residents, there are just 23,000 registered Republican voters. Although voting by mail is not allowed, this Sunday, the attendance at the Madison Hotel was minimal. Only a few dozen voters placed their ballots in the ballot box in the afternoon. At the door, a woman was handing out leaflets in support of David Stuckenberg, a businessman and former military pilot, who almost no one even knows is in the presidential race and who has received 8 votes. Another, dressed in some kind of red tracksuit and a Trump cap, was sitting in a folding chair looking at her cell phone. At a table, already inside, two volunteers from Nikki Haley’s campaign were handing out stickers (or, at least, they had stickers to hand out, but little demand) for which she was the winner.
The District of Columbia primaries only award 19 delegates to the Republican convention. This Saturday, Trump won 122 (all those elected) in the caucus from Idaho, Missouri and Michigan, and on Tuesday (Super Tuesday) there are 874 Republican delegates in 15 states at stake. For this reason, the attention paid to the capital’s primaries is usually rather limited. There aren’t even surveys.
Even so, the District of Columbia is the constituency where the most delegates are awarded in proportion to Republican members (or voters), since the distribution takes into account the population. In South Carolina, Haley only won three delegates with 300,000 votes. In Washington he takes 19 with less than 1,300 votes. The Republican primaries in the capital are closed, so only the 23,000 members can vote. Furthermore, participation is usually very low. This time there were just over 2,000 votes. In 2020, there were 1,559 votes; In 2016, only 2,839 votes were cast; in 2020, about 5,300, and in 2008, about 6,200. Obviously, they do not serve to set trends.
The capital’s voting began this Friday and that day, in another room of the same hotel, Nikki Haley gave a rally. She joked with just over a hundred supporters: “Who says there are no Republicans in Washington?” This Sunday, however, the candidates didn’t even bother to be in town to wait for the results. Nikki Haley chose to campaign in the States that vote on Tuesday, while Trump chose to rest after the rallies on Saturday, in which he had numerous lapses, disconnected phrases and errors, including saying again that the president is Barack Obama.
Republican rules establish that the 19 delegates are awarded to the candidate who obtains more than 50% of the votes in the primaries. If no candidate obtains more than half of the votes, they are allocated proportionally among those who exceed the 15% threshold. But having in practice only two candidates, the possibility of proportional distribution could only be the result of a coincidence. There have been a handful of votes for candidates who have withdrawn but were still on the ballot, such as Ron DeSantis, Chris Christie and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Trump won the Washington primary unopposed during his 2020 re-election bid. Instead, four years earlier he came in third place, behind Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and former Ohio Gov. John Kasich. He only obtained 13.8% of the votes and was also left without delegates on that occasion. Rubio’s victory was one of three he achieved in his failed 2016 bid. Previously, Mitt Romney and John McCain won the city’s primaries in 2012 and 2008 on their way to the Republican Party nomination.
The former president practically makes a show of not being loved in the capital. It is a city that he denigrates whenever he gets the chance, in a sport that many other American politicians also play. The Trump campaign issued a statement shortly after Haley’s victory sarcastically congratulating her on being named “Queen of the Swamp by DC lobbyists and insiders who want to protect the failed status quo.” Republicans call Washington “the swamp,” taking advantage of the fact that it is partly built on wetlands, but referring to its shady goings-on.
Haley’s campaign turned the argument around: “It is not surprising that Republicans closest to Washington’s dysfunction reject Donald Trump and all his chaos,” Haley’s spokeswoman, Olivia Pérez, said in a statement reported by the AP. Cubas, who recalled that Haley becomes the first woman to win a Republican primary in history.
The Republican nomination race has another relatively inconsequential stop this Monday in the North Dakota caucuses, where 29 delegates are awarded and Trump is expected to sweep. And then comes Super Tuesday, where Trump will certify, according to all the polls, that the distance he maintains with Haley is unbridgeable despite Washington’s testimonial victory.
Follow all the information about the elections in the United States on our weekly newsletter.