Donald Trump easily won the South Carolina Republican primary Saturday night, knocking Jeb Bush out of the race and making himself the clear front-runner for the nomination as the contest shifts into the Deep South.
“We won! We won!” Trump said, hugging Lt. Gov. Henry McMaster.
“There’s nothing easy about running for president,” he added. “It’s tough, it’s nasty, it’s vicious, it’s beautiful,” he added.
“When you win, it’s beautiful.”
Trump’s win marked his second straight victory in the Republican primaries.
Even his closest rivals continued to struggle in his shadow.
Both Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz were a full 10 percentage points behind Trump’s 32.9 percent showing.
Bush stumbled into a statistical tie for fourth with Ohio Gov. John Kasich, around 8 percent, and dropped out of the race 90 minutes after the polls closed.
“I congratulate my competitors who are remaining on the island,” Bush quipped.
“I’m proud of the campaign we ran to unify our country,” Bush said. But, “The people of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina have spoken, so tonight I am suspending my campaign.”
Trump’s victory comes after a week in which he traded barbs with Pope Francis on immigration, threatened to sue a rival and accused former President George W. Bush of lying about the Iraq War. But the real-estate mogul appealed to evangelical and moderate conservatives alike, earning broad support from Republicans across the state.
He collected 38 of South Carolina’s 50 delegates with 40 percent of precincts reporting. No other candidate had managed to grab a delegate in South Carolina.
Trump now has a total 55 delegates, putting him well ahead of his rivals on a path to collect the 1,237 needed to win the Republican nomination.
Cruz had only 11 delegates, and Rubio only has 10.
The candidate who has won the South Carolina has gone on to earn the party’s nod every year since 1980 except for once, in 2012, when Newt Gingrich won but lost to Mitt Romney.
The battle for second place in the Palmetto State was vicious. Cruz and Rubio traded accusations over trickery and deceptive robocalls in the final hours of the state’s primary.
Neither candidate could secure more than a quarter of the electorate as the results trickled in. With 82 percent of precincts reporting, Rubio led Cruz by about 3,500 votes.
Rubio did well with pragmatic Republicans. Of South Carolina voters who said winning in November was the most important to them, 39 percent favored Rubio, a CBS poll showed. A third place finish for Cruz is a disappointment, analysts said.
The state was his first test of whether his get-out-the-vote operation could defeat Trump in a Southern state with a high percentage of evangelical conservatives.
Kasich promised to campaign through Super Tuesday when his home state goes to the polls.
“Tonight it became a four-person race for the nomination,” said Kasich strategist John Weaver.
Bush had insisted he would continue campaigning in Nevada next week for the state’s caucus Tuesday, but reversed course once the polls closed in South Carolina.
When asked whether he would join a Trump ticket as vice president on Saturday, Bush quickly said, “No,” to laughter, adding, “Let’s be clear, I don’t think he would ask me.”
With Post Wire Services