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Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley has won the Republican presidential primary in Vermont, NBC News projects — her first Super Tuesday win amid a deluge of other state calls for former President Donald Trump.
Despite the narrow Haley victory in Vermont, Trump is expanding his national delegate lead with wins in other Super Tuesday contests. But his weakness with independents and other non-core Republicans participating in this year’s GOP primary showed through in Vermont.
For weeks, Haley’s campaign has pointed to New England states like Vermont as part of her path forward. The state has an open primary system, which allows any registered voters to participate in the Republican nominating contest.
In a memo ahead of the Jan. 23 New Hampshire primary, the Haley campaign wrote that “there is significant fertile ground for Nikki” on Super Tuesday due to those rules.
“Eleven of the 16 Super Tuesday states have open or semi-open primaries. Of the 874 delegates available on Super Tuesday, roughly two thirds are in states with open or semi-open primaries,” the memo added.
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At a rally on Sunday in South Burlington, Vermont, Haley was joined by Gov. Phil Scott, who is one of only two Republican governors to endorse Haley, along with Gov. Chris Sununu in neighboring New Hampshire.
At that event, Haley told the crowd, “I’m going to keep on fighting,” because, “70% of Americans say they don’t want Donald Trump or Joe Biden.”
She added that she wanted supporters to “send them a message for me. In a general election, we’re given a choice. In a primary, we make our choice. This is the time to make our choice.”
But by the time NBC News projected Haley’s win in Vermont Tuesday night, Trump had already won 11 other states and built on his delegate lead.
Vermont is the second 2024 contest Haley has won, following a weekend victory in the low-turnout Washington, D.C., primary.
For weeks, Haley’s campaign has dodged questions about what her path to victory looks like following Super Tuesday.
And ahead of the GOP primary in Haley’s home state of South Carolina, her campaign manager Betsy Ankney told reporters on a press call that the campaign has “rolled out leadership teams in most of the states through the end of March, including Georgia and Washington State.”
“We have infrastructure on the ground in those states through the end of March,” Ankeny added.
