Nikki Haley has won a primary contest, the first woman ever to win a Republican Primary. The BBC, where all reporters suffer from acute #TrumpDerangementSyndrome, had a collective knicker wet and pondered whether this meant the Donald Trump bandwagon was off the rails. Fear not. It is not. The BBC, as you might expect, ignore little things called facts.
The primary is for the District of Columbia, that is to say Washington DC. It is not a state just a city which is overwhelmingly black, so largely registered Democrats, with the only white citizens largely part of the political class, the problem, the swamp. As such there are just over 22,000 registered Republican voters in DC. Trying to find someone eligible to vote in the primary is like hunting down a Tory in the East End of Glasgow.
And of those eligible to vote, only 2,035 bothered to do so. So when the BBC celebrates Nikki Haley getting 62% of the vote what it means is that she got a grand total of 1,274 votes. That is in a City with an electorate of 680,000. Of course, in all the primaries and caucuses held so far, bar that in the Swamp, Trump has thrashed Haley At the weekend, not that the BBC noticed much, Trump won all 39 delegates in a Republican Party nominating convention held in Michigan; won overwhelmingly in the Missouri caucuses, picking up another 51 delegates; and won nearly 85% of the vote in the Idaho caucuses, securing all 32 of the delegates from that contest.
So Haley gets 19 delegates from the Swamp. She now has 43 delegates, Trump has 244.
Tomorrow, we see Super Tuesday when Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia are holding primaries. Two states, Alaska and Utah, are holding caucuses. So that is 15 states and the polls suggest that Trump will win more than 80% in some of those contests and will win all comfortably. Most of them award delegates to the Republican convention on a winner take all basis.
There are 865 Republican delegates that will be allocated tomorrow, and the winner of the GOP presidential nomination must collect 1,215.
And thus it is possible that after a few more Primaries Trump could have an invincible lead by March 12. There is no point Haley staying in the race at that juncture. Whatever the BBC may fantasise, even if Trump is sent to prison by a kangaroo court somewhere, that does not allow Haley back into the race. His delegates detest Haley who they see as a bit of a Democrat and certainly part of the Swamp and would, on his command, simply pick someone else, blessed by the Donald, as the GOP choice for President.
Let the BBC have its day of fantasy. The reality will be clear tomorrow and whatever Pravda tells us here in Airstrip One the latest polls show Trump leading Biden by 2% to 4%, more if fringe third party candidates are in the mix. In all the swing states which will decide the contest, Trump is well ahead. At some stage that grim truth will dawn even on those BBC staffers with the most acute cases of #TrumpDerangementSyndrome.