She stood up to him in Vermont.
Nikki Haley, Donald Trump's last rival still in the Republican primary race, won in this northwestern American state on Tuesday.
It thus deprived the billionaire of the grand slam on the occasion of this “Super Tuesday”, a day during which around fifteen states participate simultaneously in the vote for the primaries of the Democratic and Republican camps.
“We don’t get unity by simply declaring that we are united.
Today, in state after state, there remains a large share of Republican voters who express their deep concerns about Donald Trump,” reacted one of the candidate's campaign spokespersons, thus responding to the support of the former president who asked him to drop out of the race.
“I will continue to fight,” Nikki Haley herself had said during a meeting two days earlier.
Also read “Super Tuesday”: after his success among the Republicans, Trump still more favorite against Biden
This narrow victory, if it does not allow Nikki Haley to catch up on her rival, at least shows the existence of Donald Trump's detractors within his party.
Since the start of the campaign, the former ambassador to the UN has posed herself as the candidate who will be able to restore “normality” in the face of her rival’s “chaos”.
But most Republican voters are turning a deaf ear to his plea, while polls show that the 2020 rematch, pitting Trump against Biden, does not excite Americans - even if it becomes clearer every day .
Several explanations for this victory
For weeks, the rival of the Republican billionaire has focused her campaign on the New England states (a region in the northwest of the United States), which includes Vermont.
This state traditionally supports moderate Republicans, a political science professor at the University of Vermont told the Washington Post.
The governor of Vermont, Phil Scott, is one of only two Republicans to have supported Nikki Haley's candidacy, along with that of neighboring New Hampshire - won despite everything by Donald Trump in January.
It is also possible that independents and Democrats chose to vote in the Republican primary, driven by anti-Trump sentiment.
Because in certain states including Vermont, the primary is not only reserved for party voters.
On Sunday, Nikki Haley won her first victory, in Washington DC, with 63% of the vote.
A success above all symbolic, in the federal capital where the immense majority of inhabitants are Democrats, since it thus made the former UN ambassador the very first woman to win a Republican primary.
Donald Trump remains, despite everything, the big winner of “Super Tuesday”, with 14 states won out of the 15, according to American media projections.
Above all, he already has more than 990 delegates compared to less than 100 for Nikki Haley.
They are the ones who will designate the official candidate of the Republican Party at the Party's national convention this summer.
You need more than 1,250 to obtain a majority.
The candidate did not speak Tuesday evening, fueling speculation about her future.