Indian-American US presidential candidate Nikki Haley scored a surprising victory over Donald Trump in the Republican primary in the US state of Vermont, her second win in the race for the White House in 2024. Haley, 52, leads former president Trump 49.9 per cent to 45.8 per cent with 98 per cent of the vote counted, according to US media outlets.<\/p>\n
While Trump, 77, maintains a lead in every other state, charging towards the Republican nomination, Haley\u2019s triumph in Vermont marks her second victory in the primaries and her first in Super Tuesday. Haley\u2019s campaign said on Tuesday that it was \u201chonoured\u201d by her projected win in Vermont\u2019s Republican presidential primary.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re honoured to have received the support of millions of Americans across the country today, including in Vermont where Nikki became the first Republican woman to win two presidential primary contests,\u201d Haley spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas said in a statement. \u201cUnity is not achieved by simply claiming \u2018we\u2019re united.'\u201d<\/p>\n
Haley\u2019s campaign said there remains a \u201clarge block of Republican primary voters who are expressing deep concerns\u201d about the former president. \u201cThat is not the unity our party needs for success. Addressing those voters\u2019 concerns will make the Republican Party and America better,\u201d Perez-Cubas said.<\/p>\n
Trump has a formidable delegate lead with 893 delegates, while Haley has 66. To win the presidential nomination of the Republican party, either of the two candidates needs 1,215 delegates. Political pundits had pointed to Vermont as Haley\u2019s best chance to win a state, especially given its history of favouring moderate Republican candidates.<\/p>\n
Adding to that advantage, she received a crucial endorsement from Vermont Governor Phil Scott over the weekend. \u201cVermont has a history of favouring moderate Republican candidates, and she got the endorsement of Governor Scott over the weekend. I don\u2019t think that makes her a favourite, but she has her best shot,\u201d University of Vermont political science professor Alex Garlick told USA Today.<\/p>\n
Vermont\u2019s primary operates on a winner-takes-all basis, offering 17 delegates to the candidate who secures 50 per cent or more of the statewide vote. Otherwise, the delegates will be divided among Haley and Trump. Just two days prior, Haley made history by winning the Republican primary in Washington DC, becoming the first woman ever to achieve this milestone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Indian-American US presidential candidate Nikki Haley scored a surprising victory over Donald Trump in the Republican primary in the US\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":2652,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[9849,168,3313,296,7823,3530,10836,2965],"class_list":["post-33247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-delegates","tag-donald-trump","tag-endorsement","tag-nikki-haley","tag-republican-presidential-primary","tag-us-2024-presidential-elections","tag-vermont-primary","tag-victory"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}