Victory for Trump, Disaster for Biden in Michigan Primary

Though President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump comfortably won their respective primaries in Michigan, the outcomes nonetheless painted a picture of two campaigns heading in opposite directions.

No one seriously doubted the outcome going into the contest, and media interest was focused not on whether Biden and Trump would win, but by what margin they would win. Ironically, the Michigan primary is the first in the 2024 cycle where the Democratic contest received more attention than the Republican contest, due to a very loud campaign by Arab Americans and left-wing activists to promote a vote for “uncommitted” to protest President Biden’s refusal to condemn Israel.

In the end, the results were the worst of all worlds for the Biden campaign. “Uncommitted” did well enough to show that the anti-Israel faction of the Democratic Party commands real support, but poorly enough to show that most Democrats disagree with that faction and any effort to appease them would backfire with the rest of the party.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump not only won, but received almost as many votes as the total number cast in the Democratic primary.

Here are a few takeaways from the results of the contest.

The Republican primary is over

This may not seem like a huge revelation. Nikki Haley has failed to win a single state, even losing the Nevada primary to “None of the Above,” and was recently abandoned by the Koch network.

Nonetheless, after the South Carolina primary, Haley provided a new rationale for her campaign: She had won nearly 40 percent of the vote, and while 40 percent was nowhere near 50 percent, it was, she argued, a substantial portion of the Republican electorate that deserved a voice.

The results in Michigan obliterated this argument. Donald Trump carried the state by 68.2 percent to 26.8 percent for Haley, winning every county.

Evidence already existed from New Hampshire and South Carolina that Nikki Haley was not speaking for 40 percent of Republicans at all. A substantial portion of her vote in those states appears to have come from Democrats who crossed over to vote against Trump but had no intention of voting for Haley in a general election against Biden.

Exit polls in New Hampshire and South Carolina show Trump won over 70 percent of self-identified Republicans, and the results in Michigan, where for the first time there was at least a half-hearted contest on the Democratic side, provide support for the supposition that Haley’s actual base of Republicans is closer to 25 percent of the primary electorate.

Nor can Haley blame the Michigan result on a low turnout, with more than 1.1 million people showing up to the polls. This was around 200,000 less than in 2016, but while Donald Trump increased his vote total from 484,000 to 756,000, Haley was unable to match John Kasich’s 321,000 in 2016, winning only 295,000 votes. She also cannot blame the Democratic primary, where turnout fell from 1.2 million in 2016 to around 760,000 in 2024. Those voters don’t care about her enough to bother to vote.

The conclusion is that Haley is dependent not on moderate Republicans but on partisan Democrats for her relatively “strong” performances.

Democrats Have a Unity Problem

In the lead-up to the Michigan primary, a campaign by far-left and Islamic activists to encourage votes for the option of “uncommitted” attracted widespread attention from a media desperate for a story now that Haley’s campaign was in its death throes. A similar effort in New Hampshire, encouraging voters to write in “cease-fire now,” had gone nowhere, attracting well under 1 percent of the vote.

But in Michigan, the activists were aided by media attention and the ability to attract support from elected officials, including far-left House member Rashida Tlaib.

The “uncommitted” campaigners were successful enough in creating at least the impression of widespread support that figures such as former Texas Senate, gubernatorial, and presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke publicly endorsed it, and traveled to Michigan to campaign. While O’Rourke’s skills at winning elections leave something to be desired, he is an expert on what appeals to online activists, and the things that will motivate them to send him money. There is nothing in his record to indicate an affiliation with the truly hardcore activist left, so the move is best read as an opportunistic calculation.

Superficially, it is not one that paid off. Joe Biden won the Michigan Democratic primary 81.1 percent to 13.3 percent, and as his supporters are apt to note, 10 percent is around the percentage that voted against Barack Obama in the 2012 Michigan primary.

There is a reason that supporters of the “uncommitted” campaign generally ignore their vote percentage in favor of the vote totals: “uncommitted” won more than 101,000 votes, while Donald Trump won the state over Hillary Clinton by 10,000 in 2016, and lost it by 150,000 in 2020.

Neither comparison is particularly flattering for the effort. In 2016, Bernie Sanders won 598,943 votes in the Michigan primary, meaning “uncommitted” not only failed to draw a fifth of the 2024 Democratic primary vote, but also failed to draw a fifth of Bernie Sanders’ 2016 primary vote.

Furthermore, rather than focusing on the 10 percent “uncommitted” won against Barack Obama in the 2012 contest, it might be worthwhile to compare it with the 19.6 percent Dean Philips won in New Hampshire this year. Philips won a mere 2.6 percent in Michigan, so the strong implication is that 20 percent is around what a generic, non-Biden option will receive in a contest where a campaign takes place.

Philips campaigned and spent money in New Hampshire, just as the “uncommitted” campaign did in Michigan. That “uncommitted” did substantially worse than Philips in New Hampshire implies “uncommitted” or “Drop Israel Now” is less popular than a generic anti-Biden figure like Philips.

There is no real evidence that “uncommitted” attracted anyone with its message who didn’t want to make a protest vote anyway, and plenty of evidence that it repelled at least some who might have been open to opposing Biden.

This is not entirely good news for Biden. If “uncommitted” had performed as Philips did in South Carolina, winning around 3 percent, then the Biden team could safely ignore the sentiment behind it. If it had outperformed and won around 25-30 percent, clearly drawing from actual mainstream Democrats, rather than merely consolidating part of the 18 percent willing to vote against Biden, then there would be an argument that by pivoting on the issue toward supporting a “ceasefire,” whatever that means other than pressuring Israel to appease Hamas, Biden could reunite the party.

However, it is clear that whatever support Tlaib mobilized for her cause, more Democrats came out to vote against it. The six percent who voted for Williamson and Philips had the option to vote for “uncommitted” and actively chose not to. Appealing to Tlaib and her cohorts would merely drive far more voters away, as it appears the embrace of Hamas and other radical causes has already done to legions of former Sanders voters.

Turnout was poor for Democrats

The biggest problem for Biden is not that too many people voted for “uncommitted,” but rather that almost no one did so. While turnout for the Republican contest fell from 1.32 million in 2016 to 1.1 million in 2024, turnout for the Democratic contest fell from 1.2 million in 2016 to 768,000 in 2024. This becomes dramatic when we look at some of the candidates:

Donald Trump 2024 received 275,139 more votes than he did in the 2016 primary.

Joe Biden 2024 received 41,640 more votes than Hillary Clinton did in the 2016 primary.

Nikki Haley 2024 received 24,787 votes less than John Kasich did in the 2016 primary.

“Uncommitted” 2024 received 497,507 votes less than Bernie Sanders did in the 2016 primary.

Donald Trump is the only candidate to gain a substantial number of votes from comparable candidates in 2016. Joe Biden barely improved on the numbers Hillary got while losing the state to Sanders, while Haley failed to match Kasich, who came third in 2016 behind Ted Cruz.

These numbers are even more stunning if we compare them to 2020, when the Democratic primary was contested and the Republican primary was not:

Donald Trump 2024 got 118,340 more votes than he did in the 2020 primary.

Joe Biden 2024 got 216,945 votes less than he did in the 2020 primary.

“Uncommitted” 2024 got 475,490 votes less than Bernie Sanders did in the 2020 primary.

Despite having won over 93 percent of the vote in 2020, Donald Trump still gained raw votes this time around, whereas Joe Biden this year lost a substantial number from his 16 percent victory over Sanders in 2020. At the same time, “uncommitted” utterly failed to mobilize more than a fraction of the old Sanders electorate on the Israel issue. Republican turnout increased from under 700,000 to 1.1 million, whereas Democratic turnout fell almost in half, from nearly 1.6 million to 760,000.

Joe Biden’s issue is not that the left is opposing him and backing his opponents. If that was the case, he could rely on Tlaib coming back on board in the fall. Rather, Tlaib and her friends in the Squad seem to have alienated 80 percent of the electorate Sanders built on the party’s left, turning their faction into a cult. This means Biden cannot appeal to the left through their leaders and has no clear path to mobilize them in other ways.

That is Biden’s challenge in November. Haley supporters such as New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu have made clear they will endorse Trump in the general election. It does not really appear it will matter if those who ran the “uncommitted” campaign endorse Biden. They have no sizable constituency.

The Democrats, then, have a choice between Biden, who offends anti-Biden voters, and left-wingers, who offend everyone else and can deliver few votes. That is the serious challenge Michigan revealed for Democrats.

Walter Samuel is the pseudonym of a prolific international affairs writer and academic. He has worked in Washington as well as in London and Asia, and holds a Doctorate in International History.