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Indian-American presidential candidate Nikki Haley has won her first Republican nominating contest by defeating rival Donald Trump in Washington DC, injecting new life into her campaign ahead of the crucial Super Tuesday contest.
As per PTI report, Haley, 51, received 1,274 votes (62.9 per cent) against 676 votes (33.2 per cent) received by her main rival and former President Trump.
Haley will receive all 19 Republican delegates who were up for grabs in Washington DC, giving her 43 delegates nationwide – well behind Trump’s 247.
The contest took place over the weekend in a downtown hotel just steps away from the heart of DC’s lobbying hub.
With this, Haley has created history by becoming the first woman ever to win a Republican presidential primary. She is also the first Indian-American to have won either the Democratic or the Republican primaries. The three other previous Indian American presidential aspirants – Bobby Jindal in 2016, Kamala Harris in 2020 and Vivek Ramaswamy in 2024 – had failed to win even one primary.
Haley, the former US envoy to the UN, lost in South Carolina, her home state. But she is the first woman to win a Republican primary in US history.
The former South Carolina governor’s victory came after she was crushed by Trump in caucuses in Missouri and Idaho and at a Republican convention in Michigan on Saturday.
“It’s not surprising that Republicans closest to Washington dysfunction are rejecting Donald Trump and all his chaos,” Haley’s campaign national spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas said.
