Yesterday evening Nikki Haley finally won her first Republican primary - in the heart of the swamp, Washington D.C. Haley couldn’t beat Trump in her own hometown, but she could beat him in the belly of the beast.
While Haley took nearly 63% of the vote to Trump’s 33%, the turnout was anemic, with her taking the 19 delegates with only 1,274 votes (to Trump’s 676). For reference, D.C.’s population density is 11,515 people per square mile.
While I hate to give NBC credit for anything, their elections analyst Steve Kornacki did a great job breaking down how it would take the “mother of all political miracles” for Haley to win a significant amount of delegates.
Kornacki: Take a look here, though. This is all, as we say, assuming that Nikki Haley does not pull off the mother of all political miracles on Tuesday. Because right now, here's the Republican race. You see the delegate count: Trump, by a 10-to-1 margin, leading Nikki Haley. And you see what's going to come up Tuesday…These are all the states and all the results we've had so far. But let's call up the big one, Super Tuesday, and just take a look at this map and I think you'll see the challenge Haley faces.
Here's all the states - it's the map, and it's the rules. California, you would think, is a great state for Nikki Haley. But it has a closed primary. Independents can't vote [and] Democrats can't vote. And it's winner-take-all. If Trump just gets 50% plus one, he gets all 169 delegates out of California. A lot of states are like that. Alabama's essentially a winner-take-all. Arkansas's essentially a winner-take-all here. Texas is, at the statewide level, essentially a winner-take-all as well. They also give out votes by congressional district, but if you look at those districts, they really look friendly to Trump.
The bottom line for Nikki Haley, when you look at this map: 40%'s not going to cut it. Unless she's winning multiple states on Tuesday, she's going to get buried in a delegate avalanche.
Watch below:
Donald Trump currency has 244 delegates to Haley’s 43, and 1,215 are needed to secure the GOP nomination that Trump inevitably will. Over a third of all 2,429 delegates up for grabs, 854, will be in play on Super Tuesday.
Of course, considering her persistence so far, it seems like Trump could win 2000 delegates and Haley would remain in the race for some reason.
Matt Palumbo is the author of Fact-Checking the Fact-Checkers: How the Left Hijacked and Weaponized the Fact-Checking Industry and The Man Behind the Curtain: Inside the Secret Network of George Soros
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