Biden, Trump win in Michigan primaries, edging closer to 2024 rematch

By Hadriana Lowenkron

US President Joe Biden and Republican frontrunner Donald Trump both cruised to victory in their party’s Michigan primary elections Tuesday, with results for the two candidates indicating discontent among Democrats and Republicans for the likely nominees.
 

Detractors had urged Democrats to either sit out the contest or cast “uncommitted” ballots in protest over Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war. Michigan is home to a large Arab-American population where many had criticized Biden for failing to stop the fighting following the deadly Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the US and European Union.

Trump easily defeated his final major challenger, Nikki Haley, according to the Associated Press and other news organizations.

Early Wednesday, Trump had 68% to Haley’s 26.8%, with 69% of the vote counted. Biden had 81.2%, with 13% going to uncommitted, with 60% of votes counted, according to AP. 

Trump has swept the primary and caucus contests so far and on Saturday delivered a humiliating loss to Haley in her own home state of South Carolina, advancing his path to the nomination. Yet the votes for Haley, in Michigan and other states, suggest a sizable portion of the Republican electorate takes a dim view of the party’s third nomination of Trump. Michigan’s Republican Party is scheduled to hold a caucus on March 2 that will award the lion’s share of delegates. 

While Biden had been expected to handily win the primary, those protest votes show the challenges his reelection campaign faces with parts of the Democratic base amid turmoil in the Middle East. Biden narrowly won Michigan in 2020 and the state is again considered a must-win this November.

He did not face a serious challenger in the contest, with US Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota and self-help author Marianne Williamson, who dropped out of the race earlier this month, the only other names on the Democratic ballot.

Biden, in a statement from his campaign thanked “every Michigander who made their voice heard,” and cited the state’s “diverse coalition” that helped get him elected in 2020.

And in remarks to state Republicans, Trump said: “We win Michigan, we win the whole thing.” 

Trump narrowly won Michigan over Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent, in 2016 before losing there to Biden four years later — and it is expected to be fiercely contested again this year.

A Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll released in January found Biden trailing Trump in Michigan 47% to 42% in a hypothetical general-election rematch.

Despite the intensifying criticism of his stance, Biden has strongly supported Israel’s right to defend itself, even as he increasingly pushes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to do more to protect civilian lives in Hamas-controlled Gaza and to bolster the flow of humanitarian aid. The war has so far claimed the lives of some 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the health ministry run by Hamas.

At a rally on Sunday in Dearborn, Michigan, speakers called on voters to punish Biden for his handling of the Israel-Hamas war. 

Top administration officials were deployed to the state earlier this month to meet with Arab and Muslim community leaders in a sign of concern over the backlash.

US Representative Rashida Tlaib a Michigan Democrat and a Palestinian-American, said she was “proud” to have cast a vote for uncommitted. Just over 20,000 Michigan voters, or 10.7%, chose “uncommitted” in 2012 instead of incumbent Barack Obama — the last Democratic president to seek reelection without a serious challenger.

Haley, who campaigned in Michigan earlier this week, has vowed to stay in the race until at least Super Tuesday on March 5, when more than a dozen states hold primaries.

In an interview with CNN Tuesday evening, she was asked about the changes that have brought about Trump’s dominance of the Republican Party. 

“What I’m saying to my Republican Party family, is we’re in a ship with a hole in it, and we can either go down with the ship and watch the country go socialist left, or we can see that we need to take the life raft and move in a new direction,” she said.