President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have won their respective primaries in Michigan, according to a projection by the Associated Press.
The outcome of Tuesday’s primary was not surprise. Both men have cruised to victory in primary contests so far this year on their way to a likely presidential election rematch this November — but important questions remain for both men based on the results in the Wolverine State, a key battleground for both parties in the general election.
For Biden, the question is the salience of a push by progressive activists to get voters to pick “uncommitted” as a form of protest to push the incumbent to back a permanent cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
Trump, on the other hand, faces a resilient challenger in former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and the challenge of trying to win over her sizable chunk of Republican voters amid questions about his strength among general election voters.
Tuesday’s contest in Michigan is the final one before Super Tuesday on March 5, when more than a dozen states — accounting for roughly a third of all delegates to the nominating conventions — are up for grabs.
Both campaigns will be closely watching the election results in a state that Biden, in a local Michigan radio interview on Monday, called “one of the five” that will determine the outcome of November’s election.
Narrowly winning the reliably blue state by just 11,000 votes over Hillary Clinton helped give Donald Trump the presidency in 2016, the first Republican to do so since 1988, but Joe Biden won it back in 2020 by more than 150,000 votes.
But Biden faced a unique challenge in the state over his perceived handling of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza and his relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. At more than 310,000 residents, Michigan has the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the United States; about half of the population of Dearborn, a populous suburb of Detroit, are Arab American.
Activists in the state earlier this month launched Listen to Michigan, an effort aiming to show Biden that his administration must listen to the state's voters and change his policy on the war in Gaza.
The organization has set a goal of getting roughly 10,000 voters to vote "uncommitted," a nod to the margin by which Trump won the state over Hillary Clinton in 2016. They easily surpassed that on Tuesday night.
“This is not an anti-Biden campaign,” Layla Elabed, the campaign's organizer and the sister of Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the first Palestinian American woman to serve in Congress, told CNN. “It’s a humanitarian vote. It’s a protest vote. It is a vote that tells Biden and his administration that we believe in saving lives.”
“I was proud today to walk in and pull a Democratic ballot and vote uncommitted,” Tlaib, one of the movement’s most prominent backers, said in a message posted to social media on Tuesday. “We must protect our democracy, we must make sure that our government is about us, about the people. When 74% of Democrats in Michigan support a cease-fire yet President Biden is not hearing us, this is the way we can use our democracy to say, ‘listen, listen to Michigan.’”
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Monday said she thinks there will be a solid number of “uncommitted” votes in protest of President Joe Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.
“I think there will be a sizable number of votes for 'uncommitted,'” Whitmer, a co-chair for Biden’s 2024 campaign, said in an interview with NBC News.
“I think that that’s possible,” she added when asked if the number of “uncommitted” votes will reach 10,000 – the threshold organizers of the effort have set as their goal.
For context, in the 2020 presidential primaries, "uncommitted" scored more than 19,000 (1.2%) votes on the Democratic side and over 32,000 (4.8%) on the Republican side. In 2016, more than 21,000 (1.79%) "uncommitted" votes were cast in the Democratic primary between Clinton and Bernie Sanders and 22,000 (1.72%) were cast in the GOP primary.
In 2012's Democratic primary, in which then-President Barack Obama was running unopposed, more than 20,000 (10%) "uncommitted" votes were cast; he won the state over Mitt Romney with 54% of the vote that November in the general election.
Despite trailing Trump in the delegate count — 110-20 ahead of Michigan — and thus far not winning any states, Haley has vowed to forge ahead with her presidential campaign.
Haley's campaign on Sunday touted a $1 million fundraising haul in the 24 hours following the South Carolina primary, which they said was entirely raised by grassroots supporters. Haley, a former two term governor of the state, lost the primary but notched roughly 40% of the vote, which she has painted as a warning sign for Trump.
“We are seeing all over the country that the Republican Party is fully divided,” Haley said at an event in Michigan on Monday. “If you have a candidate that can’t win 40% of the vote in the early states, if you have a candidate who can’t bring in independents, if you have a candidate that is driving people out of our party, then that is a sinking ship.”
There are 117 delegates up for grabs on Tuesday for the Democrats.
There are 55 delegates up for grabs for the Republican candidates. Sixteen will be awarded by the primary on Tuesday, while the remaining 39 will be awarded at a nominating convention held on Saturday. This was in part because Democrats, who control the state government after last year's midterms, moved the state's primary up, which conflicts with Republican Party rules prohibiting states -- except for traditionally early voting ones like Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina -- from holding primary contests before March 1.
But two warring factions within the state Republican party have each pledged to hold their own convention, leading to some confusion.
Kristina Karamo, who ran for governor unsuccessfully in 2022 against Whitmer, was elected to lead the Michigan Republican Party last year, but was ousted earlier this year. She has refused to recognize her ouster and relinquish power, and will be holding a convention in Detroit on Saturday.
On Tuesday, hours before the polls closed, a judge ordered Karamo to cease her efforts to remain in power, affirming her removal from the Michigan GOP.
Former U.S. Ambassador Pete Hoekstra, the RNC-recognized chair of the Michigan GOP, will be hosting a convention in Grand Rapids on Saturday.
Spectrum News' Maddie Gannon, David Mendez and Joseph Konig contributed to this report.