Just minutes after the polls closed on Saturday evening, ex-president Donald Trump, with only one percent of the votes counted, could be declared the winner in South Carolina by several American media.
An expected result if you look at previous opinion polls in the state. Shortly after the announcement, Trump celebrated the victory with his voters.
– This came a little earlier than expected, and is even a bigger win than we had expected, he says to a jubilant crowd in Columbia, South Carolina.
With 86 percent of the vote counted, Trump had 60 percent support, compared to Haley’s 39, reports CNN.
Haley: “A woman of my word”
In recent weeks, Donald Trump has won over his opponent Nikki Haley in the primary elections in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. Now the former UN ambassador also has to see himself defeated in his own home state.
The election in South Carolina has previously been pointed out as a fateful election for Haley and now the pressure is increasing on her to drop out.
But in a speech after the loss, Nikki Haley announced that she is “a woman of her word” and will not back down.
– I am not giving up this fight, not when a majority of Americans dislike Donald Trump and Joe Biden, she says to her constituents in Charleston, South Carolina.
She added that she doesn’t think Trump can beat Biden in the upcoming presidential election.
– Nikki Haley now has two choices, says SVT’s US correspondent Fouad Youcefi.
Hear Fouad Youcefi on Nikki Haley’s remaining options in the clip above.