'Have no regrets...': Nikki Haley drops out of US presidential race, paves way for Donald Trump
Nikki Haley, the former US Ambassador to the United Nations and a Republican candidate, announced her decision to end her presidential campaign, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
FollowNikki Haley, who is former US president Donald Trump’s sole rival in the Republican presidential primary campaign, announced on Wednesday that she is exiting the presidential race, US broadcaster CNN reported citing people familiar with the developments.
In a press conference on Wednesday, Indian-American politician Haley expressed "gratitude for the outpouring of support" she has received from all across the United States, but added that "time has now come to suspend my campaign."
"It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it," she said. "And I hope he does that."
The only candidate challenging US President Donald Trump in the Republican presidential primary was Nikki Haley, but she lost badly in terms of delegates and without the necessary backing from the party hierarchy.
Haley won just 43 of the Republican delegates while Trump won 764 on Super Tuesday. She did, however, win one primary while Trump won the primaries in more than a dozen states on Tuesday.
Donald Trump's status as the Republican party's nominee was largely established on Super Tuesday, but he was not officially named the front-runner since Haley prevailed in the Vermont Republican primary, obstructing Trump's path to victory. The former governor of South Carolina and ambassador to the UN had just secured the GOP nomination in Washington, D.C.
The states of Virginia or Massachusetts were deemed favourable for Nikki Haley but she lost those states to her former boss.
Haley declared last week that she was determined to continue running and that she believed it was crucial for voters to still have a choice between the two candidates. With Haley’s reported exit, biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott and Florida governor Ron DeSantis, all of whom called off their races. The latter three later endorsed Trump.
Super Tuesday is a significant stage in the presidential primary where candidates from several states simultaneously cast ballots. With the exception of Vermont, the results were mostly in Trump's favor, with a winning margin of about 1%.
