President Joe Biden speaks to the House Democratic Caucus Issues Conference at Lansdowne Resort. Photo / AP
President Joe Biden speaks to the House Democratic Caucus Issues Conference at Lansdowne Resort. Photo / AP
Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump easily won their party’s primaries in Michigan, but today’s results show both candidates have cause for concern in their bid to win the swing state in November.
An “uncommitted” vote in Michigan’s Democratic primary was the first indication of how a backlash over President Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza might impact his re-election campaign. Trump won his primary by a large margin, but support for rival Nikki Haley once again showed some Republican voters may have misgivings about giving the former president another four years in the general election.
Some takeaways from Michigan:
Biden, Trump each move closer to their party’s nomination
Michigan was the last major primary state before Super Tuesday, and both sides were watching closely for implications for the November general election in one of the few genuine swing states left in the country.
Biden has now cruised to victories over lesser-known candidates in South Carolina, Nevada and New Hampshire, which he won in a write-in campaign. Today’s results show his standing is still strong in Michigan, which Biden returned to the Democratic column in 2020.
Trump has swept all five of the early state contests, including South Carolina, the home state of rival Haley. He now heads into Super Tuesday, when 15 states and one territory hold Republican nominating contests, as the overwhelming favourite to lock up the Republican nomination.
Michigan was one of three so-called blue wall states, including Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, that Trump won in 2016. He predicted a big win beforehand.
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a primary election night party at the South Carolina State Fairgrounds in Columbia. Photo / AP
Sixteen of Michigan’s 55 presidential delegates will be determined by the primary results, while the remaining delegates will be allocated during a March 2 convention. Trump’s anticipated dominance at the state convention, where grassroots activists will play a key role, will decide the allocation of the remaining 39 delegates.
Some Democrats express anger over Gaza with ‘uncommitted’ vote
Michigan has become the focal point of Democratic frustration over the White House’s actions in the Israel-Hamas conflict. It has the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the nation.
That anger came through loud and clear today as some voters marked “uncommitted” on their ballot in the Democratic primary. Biden still dominated the primary, but the result could be a concern in a state he won by less than 3 per cent in 2020 and likely can’t afford to lose this year if he wants to win a second term.
Organisers of the “uncommitted” movement had purposely kept expectations low, having only seriously begun their push a few weeks ago. The “Listen to Michigan” campaign that organised the push said they were hoping for 10,000 votes, pointing to Trump’s win of less than 11,000 votes in 2016 to show the significance of that number.
When Barack Obama ran for reelection in 2012, the last time a Democratic presidential incumbent sought re-election, the “uncommitted” option received close to 21,000 votes — or 11 percentage points.
The “uncommitted” vote totals would need to be between 20 and 30 percentage points for Democrats to worry about their impact in November, Richard Czuba, a pollster who has long tracked Michigan politics, said.
“Twenty per cent gets my attention. If it rises to 25 per cent, that gets a lot more attention and if it rises above 30 per cent, I think that’s a signal that Joe Biden has issues - pretty substantial issues - in his base.”
Much of the “uncommitted” vote was expected to come from the east side of the state, in communities such as Dearborn and Hamtramck, where Arab Americans represent close to half the population. Biden won Dearborn by a roughly 3-to-1 advantage in 2020 and Hamtramck by a 5-to-1 margin.
