LANSING, Michigan — Former President Donald Trump won the Michigan Republican Party‘s presidential primary Tuesday night, defeating former United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley for the second time in less than one week.
The Associated Press called the race shortly after all the polls closed at 9 p.m. ET. With 32% of the ballots counted, Trump had 67% of the vote to Haley’s 28.1%. On the Democratic Party side, President Joe Biden fended off a protest vote campaign over the Israel-Hamas war, earning 78% of the vote, to 15% for “uncommitted.”
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In his victory address to the Michigan GOP, Trump thanked voters and congratulated former Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra as the new chairman of the state GOP after he replaced the controversial former chairwoman Kristina Karamo. He did not mention Haley at all in his remarks.
“This was a great day, and Pete, congratulations. You’ll be a fantastic chairman, one of the best ever,” Trump said before referencing the November elections.
“We have a very simple task: We have to win on Nov. 5, and we’re going to win big, and it’s going to be like nothing that anybody has ever seen,” Trump continued. “It’s going to be fantastic. We win Michigan, we win the whole thing. The auto workers are with us. We have so many people with us.”
The Michigan victory is another notch in cementing the Republican presidential nomination for Trump, and it comes just three days after he defeated Haley by 20 percentage points in South Carolina, her home state. The loss in the Palmetto State further diminished the odds of Haley winning the GOP nomination.
The former president has won all the early nominating contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina, along with the U.S. Virgin Islands caucuses and the Michigan primary.
Haley refused to heed calls from Trump allies to drop out and instead rallied in Michigan on Sunday and Monday. The former ambassador vowed to continue her campaign through Super Tuesday on March 5. She remains the final candidate contesting Trump for the GOP nomination.
Haley repeatedly has emphasized that 40% of GOP voters want an alternative to Trump after she lost the South Carolina primary as a sign of the former president’s weaknesses. However, as her share of the vote in Michigan was on track to drop below her previous benchmark, her campaign lowered the math to better reflect the margin of defeat.
“Donald Trump is losing about 35 percent of the vote,” Haley spokeswoman Olivia Perez-Cubas said in a statement after Trump’s victory. “That’s a flashing warning sign for Trump in November. Since Trump became president in 2016, he lost Michigan Republicans the state House, state Senate, and Governor’s mansion. What was once a beacon for the conservative cause, the Michigan Republican Party is now fractured and divided.”
But Trump’s allies claim voters will come around to supporting him.
“Donald Trump is Donald Trump,” Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) said. “I think a lot of people in Michigan and other places understand that he will never be constrained by anyone, tweeting and all of the messages that he puts out, the names that he gives people. I think a lot of people have come to accept that as him.
“There certainly are independents, and there’s certainly Never Trumper Republicans who say, because of that, they can’t support him,” Walberg continued. “But in the end, when it comes actually down to a general election, vote.”
Tom Barrett, the likely GOP nominee for Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, claimed that if Trump contrasts his record with President Joe Biden, voters likely will support him in the general election.
“I think President Trump has a real opportunity to draw that distinction for people,” Barrett said. “The failures of the Biden administration are miles deep. You’ve got cost-living challenges that families are still facing. You’ve got a border that is completely and totally unsecured, seemingly on purpose, through dereliction of duty and purposeful violation by the Biden administration. You have national security crises, you have war, you know, seemingly festering in every corner of the world right now and growing worse and worse as time goes on.”
Michigan’s primary is the last major nominating contest before Super Tuesday, when 15 states and one territory will hold Republican primary contests. Trump is expected to dominate Haley among the states that are voting and once again inch closer to becoming the GOP presidential nominee.
Trump leads Haley by 62.2%, according to an average of national polls from RealClearPolitics.
Michigan is also the first battleground state to hold a primary this election cycle. Both Biden and Trump, should he become the GOP standard-bearer, are looking to shore up support in the crucial Wolverine State.
In the past four election cycles, the winner of the state has gone on to win the presidency. In the 2020 election, Biden won Michigan over Trump, 50.6% to 47.8%, flipping the state blue. Four years before that, Trump narrowly won Michigan over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, 47.6% to 47.3%.
In 2012 and 2008, former President Barack Obama won the state over Republican nominees Mitt Romney and John McCain, respectively.
Biden faced no major Democratic challenger in Michigan’s primary contest, but Arab American and Muslim voters infuriated with his handling of the Israel-Hamas war have vowed to “Abandon Biden” and cast “uncommitted” votes.
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The disgruntled anti-Biden voters are pushing the president to call for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), the sole Palestinian-American in Congress, voted “uncommitted” in the Michigan Democratic primary in a sign of the tensions Biden faces within his party.
