Michigan primary voters on Tuesday gave President Biden and former president Donald Trump unsurprising and lopsided victories that will hasten their respective marches to their party\u2019s nominations.<\/p>\n
Late Tuesday night, Biden was leading \u201cuncommitted\u201d 80 percent to 15 percent, while Trump led former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley 67 percent to 28 percent.<\/p>\n
But while the presidential nominating contests aren\u2019t really in doubt, plenty of eyes were fixed on Michigan for clues about the general election.<\/p>\n
There was a Democratic effort to get Michiganders to vote \u201cuncommitted\u201d in protest of Biden\u2019s handling of the war in Gaza. And on the Republican side, Haley has pressed the idea that the GOP base\u2019s continued reluctance to fully embrace Trump makes him a liability in November.<\/p>\n
Below are some takeaways on those and other subjects.<\/p>\n
The idea behind the \u201cuncommitted\u201d campaign was to get lots of people in a state with a disproportionate number of Arab Americans to make a point \u2014 and perhaps send a message to Biden about his Middle East policy favoring Israel too much. It was led by some prominent Democrats, including Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), a Palestinian American congresswoman.<\/p>\n
There is no question it got people\u2019s attention on Tuesday. Whether it really changed the 2024 paradigm is another matter.<\/p>\n
The 15 percent of the vote the option was getting several hours after the polls closed is substantial. But context is important.<\/p>\n
The raw number of people voting for that option was substantially higher than it was in the 2012, 2016 and 2020 Michigan primaries, when around 20,000 people picked \u201cuncommitted\u201d each time.<\/p>\n
But the actual percentage was only modestly higher than it was in the last Michigan primary featuring an incumbent president, in 2012. Then, \u201cuncommitted\u201d got about 11 percent against Barack Obama. That was a much lower turnout race, though.<\/p>\n
Another thing to remember is that the 2012 nominating process featured lots of substantial performances for \u201cuncommitted\u2019 or \u201cno preference.\u201d The option got 42 percent in Kentucky, 21 percent in North Carolina, and between 11 and 14 percent in Rhode Island, Tennessee, Maryland and Massachusetts, in addition to Michigan.<\/p>\n
The comparison to Michigan today is far from perfect.<\/p>\n
For one, these 2012 races featured no other actual candidates, so critics of the incumbent had basically one other option. (Michigan\u2019s ballot featured Rep. Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson combining for nearly 6 percent.)<\/p>\n
For another, some of these states had plenty of conservative Democrats from the days when that was more of a thing \u2014 unlike Michigan today. But not all did; Rhode Island, Maryland and Massachusetts weren\u2019t exactly bastions of leftover conservative Democrats like Kentucky, North Carolina and Tennessee.<\/p>\n
These uncommitted votes clearly signal something quite different \u2014 and potentially more troubling for the incumbent president \u2014 than those 2012 protest votes. The real question is whether support can be marshaled in other states and in other ways to make Biden truly feel as if he needs to change his ways and mind his left flank.<\/p>\n
The protest vote got a foothold after an initial false start in New Hampshire; now it\u2019s about signaling that the movement has some staying power.<\/p>\n
Haley has in recent weeks set about arguing that her vote share, too, is a sign of vulnerability for her party\u2019s front-runner.<\/p>\n
After taking 43 percent in New Hampshire and nearly 40 percent in South Carolina, she cast those numbers as betraying how Trump can\u2019t win the general election \u2014 given his status as a \u201cde facto\u201d incumbent.<\/p>\n
What the Michigan primary reinforces is that Haley\u2019s vote share will not be near 40 percent in the coming contests, but she\u2019s not bottoming out just yet.<\/p>\n
New Hampshire and South Carolina were always likely to be Haley\u2019s high-water marks \u2014 given the prevalence of independent voters in the former and the fact that the latter is her home state. The results in Michigan and polling in the states ahead on Super Tuesday next week suggest far less of an appetite for the alternative.<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t have exit poll data showing how many voters are balking at Trump in the general election. But nearly 30 percent of the vote is far from nothing.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s better than she polls nationally and in many of the Super Tuesday states. Haley also again overperformed the polls \u2014 as she did in New Hampshire and South Carolina \u2014 which suggests these polls might be overselling Trump\u2019s strength (in the primary at least).<\/p>\n
This is a state where the state party apparatus has gone very Trump-y in recent years. And Trump\u2019s hold on the GOP nomination is so firm that it\u2019s been clear for a while that Haley votes are essentially protest votes.<\/p>\n
It seems those protest votes will keep rolling in. Again, though, it\u2019s hard to know what that portends for November.<\/p>\n
If you look closely at Haley\u2019s rhetoric in recent days, it\u2019s been clear she\u2019s not really arguing anymore that this race is winnable. Instead, she seems to be making a point about how Trump is going to torpedo the party.<\/p>\n
And Tuesday night brought more of that. On CNN as results were rolling in, Dana Bash asked Haley whether the party had simply moved away from her brand of conservatism and was now \u201cabout Donald Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is very possible,\u201d Haley responded, adding: \u201cWe are giving them an option.\u201d<\/p>\n
Haley has basically signaled she\u2019ll stick it out through Super Tuesday because that\u2019s what she said she would do. \u201cGiving them an option\u201d is not \u201cI\u2019m going to win.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her goal now appears to be making her point \u2014 and possibly, if Trump loses, being able to say (perhaps ahead of another campaign) \u201cI told you so.\u201d<\/p>\n
That Biden\u2019s actual primary challenger, Phillips (D-Minn.), lost to \u201cuncommitted\u201d wasn\u2019t terribly surprising. The \u201cuncommitted\u201d campaign had significantly more momentum behind it.<\/p>\n
Phillips could still be the alternative to Biden in other states \u2014 but Michigan suggests he won\u2019t be much of one.<\/p>\n
In fact, Phillips on Tuesday night was in danger of finishing in fourth place, behind Williamson. Williamson suspended her campaign three weeks ago.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Michigan primary voters on Tuesday gave President Biden and former president Donald Trump unsurprising and lopsided victories that will hasten their respective marches to their party\u2019s nominations. Late Tuesday night, Biden was leading \u201cuncommitted\u201d 80 percent to 15 percent, while Trump led former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley 67 percent to 28 percent. But while […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1552,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1551\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}