A resident votes at an early voting site on February 17, 2024 in Marshall, Michigan. Today, in-person early voting was made available to Michigan residents for the first time.
Scott Olson | Getty Images
Republican former President Donald Trump and Democratic President Joe Biden expect to score decisive victories in Michigan’s primary elections Tuesday that will boost their campaigns ahead of Super Tuesday next week.
Both candidates face challengers within their respective parties, but the few remaining rivals pose no threat to the frontrunners, none of whom have lost a single nominating contest this cycle.
Former Republican U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley vowed to continue the fight against Trump, even after losing by 20 points in her home state of South Carolina over the weekend.
Yet Haley still got about 40% of the vote, making it less of a rout than many polls ahead of the race had predicted. The results have indicated to some political analysts that Trump’s grip on the GOP may not be as firm as he claims.
Trump’s challenge in Tuesday’s race, then, is to win a landslide victory that reflects his huge lead in the polls and validates his claim that the primary fight is over.
Meanwhile, Democratic Congressman Dean Phillips of Minnesota is continuing his campaign against the incumbent, who has so far won all available delegates. Biden even beat Phillips in New Hampshire as a write-in candidate.
Nonetheless, Biden faces the prospect of organized opposition Tuesday for the first time this cycle, from voters furious at what they see as Biden’s reluctance to call for a ceasefire on Israel’s military incursion into Gaza .
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., is encouraging Democrats to protest Biden’s stance by voting “noncommittally” in the primaries.
The impact this opposition bloc has on the overall vote will offer an early indicator of how much influence progressive voters might have in the democratic contest.
Michigan is one of the key battleground states that helped Biden defeat Trump in 2020. The state’s Democratic leaders rescheduled the primary election to be held earlier in the year, hoping to give it a bigger impact on the presidential race .
Tuesday’s contest, however, is expected to further solidify Trump and Biden as the respective leaders of their respective parties ahead of a likely general election rematch.
Polls will be open from 7am to 8pm local time. Voters can register and vote on the same day.
The state has closed primaries, meaning registered voters must make an electoral party selection on their application. Early voting lasted nine days, from Feb. 17 to Sunday. More than 1 million votes have already been cast in the 2024 presidential primary on Monday.
People vote during early voting in the state primary on the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on February 20, 2024. Michigan’s primary will be held on February 27.
Jeff Kowalsky | Afp | Getty Images
On the Democratic side, there are 117 pledged delegates in Tuesday’s contest. For Republicans, only 16 statewide delegates will be won through primary election results. Another 39 will be assigned Saturday at state party conventions.
The 16 Republican statewide delegates will be awarded in proportion to primary results, with candidates needing to receive at least 12.5% of the vote to qualify for any delegate. The remaining 39 delegates will be assigned to the 13 Congressional District conventions on March 2.
Biden won every county in the 2020 Michigan Democratic primary. This time, he enjoys not only an incumbency advantage but also a much less popular challenger than Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., whom he beat by double digits in 2020.
Trump, who was up for re-election in 2020, won 94% of that year’s Republican primary in Michigan.
Biden beat him in the general election by about three percentage points.