Donald Trump scored a huge symbolic victory Tuesday in the first state to kick him off the 2024 ballot.
The Associated Press called the Colorado Republican primary for Trump at 7:09 p.m. MST. With 42% of results in, Trump had secured 61% of the vote to Haley’s 35.5%.
Trump’s Colorado victory comes one day after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Colorado Supreme Court ruling that struck his name from the ballot.
The Supreme Court’s unanimous decision that only Congress can deny a candidate ballot access restored Trump’s name to ballots in states across the nation and killed other lawsuits still working their way through the courts. The lawsuits argued the Fourteenth Amendment’s Section 3 “Insurrection Clause” that disqualified certain officials deemed to have committed an insurrection from holding office applied to Trump, despite no court ever holding Trump was guilty of such actions.
The Colorado order had been stayed by the Colorado Supreme Court until the U.S. Supreme Court could act, so Trump would have appeared on the ballot regardless of yesterday’s ruling. The outcome is a symbolic victory for Trump, who expended significant time and resources in courts across the nation fighting Fourteenth Amendment cases.
This was the first time the Supreme Court ruled on the Insurrection Clause.
Colorado was one of the final Super Tuesday states to be called that had been considered relatively favorable for Haley, although her projected total Tuesday night was underwhelming.
The final delegate allocation is not yet determined. Candidates in Colorado’s Republican primary must hit 20% of the vote to receive any of the state’s 37 delegates in a complicated process to apportion delegates. While Haley will hit that low threshold, Super Tuesday was not kind to her in Colorado nor any other states up for grabs.
While some states like Colorado proportionally award delegates according to formulas that differ by state, many, like delegate-rich California, award all delegates to candidates hitting a certain threshold – 50% in California’s case.
Bradley Jaye is a Capitol Hill Correspondent for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter at @BradleyAJaye.
