Donald Trump suffered a blow in Tuesday’s primary in Florida, a state he only narrowly won in the 2020 presidential election, after thousands of Republicans refused to vote for him.
While the former president won the primary with 910,857 votes, 81.2 percent of the overall share, some 197,000 people, or 17.8 percent, voted for either Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis, despite both candidates having dropped out of the race.
The results suggest the former president is losing support in Florida compared with the previous election in 2020. That year, he won about 94 percent of the state vote in the primary.
The Republican went on to take the state in 2020 by a slim margin, securing 51.2 percent of the vote to Joe Biden‘s 47.9 percent.
Newsweek contacted a representative for Trump by email to comment on this story.
Last week, Trump was confirmed as the GOP nominee for November’s presidential election after securing enough delegates across multiple primaries. He looks set to face-off against Democratic incumbent Biden in a rematch of the 2020 election.
