WASHINGTON: Presidential hopefuls Donald Trump and Nikki Haley will square off in the Republican primary in Washington, D.C., on Sunday in what could be one of Haley’s best shots at defeating the former president. The capital of the United States sends only 19 of the 2,429 delegates to the Republican National Convention in July, where the candidate is formally selected.
Sunday’s results are unlikely to change the trajectory of a race Trump appears to have nailed by winning all previous nominating contests. Still, the District of Columbia, as D.C. is formally known, could be unusually fertile territory for Haley, said a senior official with the SFA Fund, the main super PAC backing Haley’s bid. During the last competitive Republican nomination contest in DC in 2016, Trump won less than 14% of the vote and no delegates, even though he won the nomination nationally.
The local party’s only polling station in a city center hotel has been open during daylight hours since Friday morning and will close for the last time at 7pm (0000 GMT) on Sunday, after which the votes will be counted. The city is 100% urban and a relatively high proportion of the population has a university education.
The core of Trump’s base skews rural and is particularly strong in areas with low educational attainment. If Trump wins, it will illustrate how he maintains a core group of supporters in every demographic and geographic part of the Republican Party. The lack of local polling and the extremely limited number of Republicans in the city created a degree of uncertainty about the outcome of the primary. Haley campaigned in D.C. on Friday. and held an event in the same hotel where the polling station is located.
