Former US President Donald Trump continued his march toward the GOP nomination on Saturday, winning caucuses in the state of Idaho and Missouri and sweeping the delegate haul at a party convention in Michigan. Trump earned every delegate at stake on Saturday, bringing his count to 244 compared to 24 for former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley.
A candidate needs to secure 1,215 delegates to clinch the Republican nomination. The next event on the Republican calendar is Sunday in the District of Columbia. Two days later is Super Tuesday, when 16 states will hold primaries on what will be the largest day of voting of the year outside of the November election. Trump is on track to lock up the nomination days later.
In Missouri, Trump swamped his main opponent, former South Carolina governor Haley, winning every county caucus in the state. In Michigan, around 2,000 party activists voted in a caucus convention, and Trump won all 39 delegates up for grabs, CNN reported. The limited vote came in the wake of chaos within the state party, including allegations of mismanagement. Trump had grabbed 16 Michigan delegates earlier in the week in a limited primary vote.
The former US president also handily won Republican caucuses in the western state of Idaho, NBC and ABC projected. Haley has raced around the country in the run-up to Super Tuesday, trying to make an increasingly hard case against the inevitability of Trump’s nomination.
The former president has now won every state nominating contest heading into next week’s “Super Tuesday,” when voters in 15 US states choose their preferred candidate for each party. Trump has gained huge momentum in the race to capture the Republican nomination at the party convention in July and Tuesday is expected to all but secure the result. He is likely to face President Joe Biden in November elections, pitting the two for the second time since 2020.
(With agency inputs)
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