Donald Trump handily defeated Nikki Haley in Michigan’s GOP primary on Tuesday, marking the former South Carolina governor’s sixth consecutive loss to the former president.
By the time the Associated Press called the race at 9 p.m. eastern time, Trump had received 65 percent of the vote and Haley had garnered 30 percent. Only 2 percent of Michigan primary voters had cast “uncommitted” ballots.
Just 16 of the state’s 55 Republican delegates will be awarded based on the result of the primary, while the rest will be allocated based on caucuses that will be held at a nominating convention on Saturday. The state’s hybrid nominating contest is the result of a change made by the state’s Democratic-controlled legislature.
The legislature voted last year to shift the state’s presidential primary from March to February to comply with President Joe Biden’s plan to change the Democratic Party’s nominating process. In an effort to avoid violating the Republican National Committee’s rules with the earlier primary, the state GOP negotiated a plan with the RNC to hold both a primary and a party convention.
Despite suffering yet another loss — and despite her major outside benefactor, Americans for Prosperity, pulling its financial support — Haley has publicly committed to staying in the race at least until Super Tuesday next week.
Ahead of her 20-point defeat in her home state last week, the Haley campaign sought to temper expectations, saying it had its sights set on a number of upcoming open or semi-open primaries on Super Tuesday. In an open primary, voters do not have to formally register with a political party ahead of Election Day in order to vote in that party’s primary. In a semi-open primary, voters who are not affiliated with a political party can choose which party’s primary they would like to participate in.
Of the 874 delegates up for grabs on March 5, nearly two-thirds are in states with open or semi-open primaries, including Texas, Maine, and Virginia. Haley’s campaign is eyeing several states that have a large contingent of college-educated voters, suburban voters, and independents, who tend to support Haley over Trump. Those states include Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia.
Trump previously defeated Haley in Iowa and New Hampshire, and he has collected Nevada’s delegates, though the two candidates did not have a head-to-head match there because of a quirk in the state’s nominating process.
“South Carolina has spoken,” Haley said on Saturday after voting in the state’s primary concluded. “We’re the fourth state to do so. In the next ten days, another 21 states and territories will speak. They have the right to a real choice, not a Soviet-style election with only one candidate. And I have a duty to give them that choice.”
Michigan also holds an open primary. More attention has been paid to the Democratic primary there than to prior nominating contests for the Democratic Party, because a faction of progressive Democrats has encouraged voters to vote “uncommitted” to voice opposition to Biden’s support for Israel in its war against Hamas. Representative Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.), a member of the progressive “Squad,” has been a prominent supporter of this effort.
Rep. Tlaib: "I was proud today to walk in and pull a Democratic ballot and vote uncommitted…when 74% of Democrats in Michigan support a ceasefire yet President Biden is not hearing us, this is the way we can use our democracy to say 'listen to Michigan'" https://t.co/RODX10p1v1
— Nicholas Wu (@nicholaswu12) February 27, 2024
The Biden administration seemed to have gotten the message, with the president saying on Monday that he was hoping to have a cease-fire in place by next week.
A senior foreign-policy aide in the administration met with Arab-American officials in Dearborn, Mich., earlier this month and reportedly acknowledged that the administration had made “missteps” in foreign policy and public messaging about the Israel–Hamas war. The move seemed to show the president’s concern about potentially alienating a large voter base in the key swing state that he won in 2020.
Still, Biden has not visited the state since February 1, when he spoke to union autoworkers and stopped at a local restaurant. Instead, Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer has been campaigning on the president’s behalf, appearing at at least six events for Biden this month, while her political-action committee hosted almost 20 other events for Biden.
The “uncommitted” vote was seemingly more of a concern for the Biden campaign than the president’s long-shot challenger, Representative Dean Phillips (D., Minn.), who recently laid off a number of his campaign staff members.