Trump wins US Virgin Islands caucus, notching third primary victory over Nikki Haley

GOP front-runner Donald Trump secured another win in the US Virgin Islands caucus Thursday night, locking in a third consecutive primary win over 2024 rival Nikki Haley.

The former president came out with 73.98% of the vote, while Haley had 26.02%.

The USVI caucus awards four delegates and is technically third after Iowa and New Hampshire, as results are tabulated hours before Nevada.

The ranked-choice ballot included Haley and Trump, as well as other candidates who did not withdraw their names like former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, businessman Perry Johnson and biotech mogul Vivek Ramaswamy. 

Trump and Haley had both been vying for victory on the islands, sending down surrogates and participating in video messages in an attempt to sway Republicans.

Neither made it down to the US territory situated in the Caribbean, but reached out to voters using other methods.

Thursday morning, Trump released a video message to the USVI, asking for voters to “go out and caucus” and predicting that he was going to “take it all.”

“It looks like we have the Republican nomination pretty much locked, and that’s the way it should be,” Trump said in the video message.

Reps. Jack Bergman of Michigan and Anna Paulina Luna of Florida were also on the ground stumping for the former president, who went to Nevada Thursday night instead to kick off the Silver State’s 26-delegate caucus.

Haley had participated in several Zoom calls with the island Republicans leading up to the caucus and had also sent down Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) to stump for her in person.

The former UN ambassador leaned on her foreign policy experience in her pitch to the islands, which USVI Republicans say are surrounded by Chinese influence.

The Republican Party in the USVI altered its caucus date for the 2024 election in order to have more say in the presidential process, as the US territory does not vote in the general election.

The Republican National Committee punished their calendar change by reducing their delegate count from nine to four.

“Going third-in-the-nation with an unrigged caucus using ranked-choice voting has given every candidate a fair and equal playing field and resulted in unprecedented attention for the Virgin Islands,” said Republican Party in the Virgin Islands chairman Gordon Ackley. “The Virgin Islands will decide the trajectory of the Republican nomination”

Trump is the only top GOP candidate participating in the Nevada caucus, and is likely to get a yawning lead in the results, which will be tabulated later Thursday.

Haley participated in the Feb. 6 Nevada primary, and despite being the only big name Republican left on the ballot, lost to “none of these candidates.”

After Thursday, Trump and Haley will next face off in South Carolina. Polls show the former president leading the former South Carolina governor by 27 points, but Haley has argued she’s “just getting started” in her home state.