Nikki Haley gets first primary win in Washington DC, with Super Tuesday ahead

But her 43 delegates still trail the former president, who won the first nine contests and has amassed 244 delegates.

North Dakota will vote on Monday before the 15-state Super Tuesday contests the next day that will award 36 per cent of all Republican delegates. Those states are mostly favourable to Trump, with winner-take-all contests likely to allow him to amass delegates quickly.

Washington is the most Democratic jurisdiction in the country, with only 23,000 registered Republicans in the city. Only about 2,000 of them voted in a primary conducted over two days at a single polling location.

“It’s not surprising that Republicans closest to Washington dysfunction are rejecting Donald Trump and all his chaos,” Haley spokeswoman Olivia Perez-Cubas said in a statement. She noted that Haley became the first woman in history to win a Republican presidential primary.

The Trump campaign quickly dismissed Haley’s victory in Washington.

“While Nikki has been soundly rejected throughout the rest of America, she was just crowned Queen of the Swamp by the lobbyists and DC insiders that want to protect the failed status quo,” said Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt.