Tuesday’s primary results in Michigan exposed a major weakness for incumbent President Joe Biden in a key swing state that could adversely impact his chances come November. In the state’s GOP primary, former President Donald Trump projected a level of strength that underscores recent polling woes, showing him with a clear, albeit narrow, lead in the general election.
As of Thursday, President Biden had captured slightly more than 8-in-10 (81%) Michigan Democratic voters. The only issue for the president is that a non-candidate – the ‘uncommitted’ vote came in second, with 13% of the vote, or roughly 100,000 votes.
Put another way, Democratic primary voters in Michigan, a group who is generally deemed older, whiter, more politically-active, and further-left, are not committed to voting for their party’s leader – who also happens to be the sitting president – come November.
To put this in context, in 2012, then-President Barack Obama lost out on 11% of voters who chose ‘uncommitted’ on their ballot. The difference, however, is in the numbers. Where Obama’s ‘uncommitted’ vote totaled just 18,000, Biden’s is almost six times that.
The effort to boost the ‘uncommitted’ vote was driven by the organizing group Listen to Michigan. Backed by the anti-Israel Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib (MI), the group hopes their efforts will deter Biden’s support for Israel in the aftermath of Hamas’ October 7th attack and Israel’s response, which has seen nearly 75% of the Gaza Strip conquered by Israeli forces and, according to Hamas, 30,000 fatalities.
In preparation for what they knew would be a large protest vote, these groups hedged expectations, reporting their goal as 10,000 ‘uncommitted’ votes to Politico. However, it doesn’t take a genius to know this story would receive far more media attention if they were seen as blowing their own “expectations” out of the water.
But what do Michigan’s results really portend? Nate Cohn’s The Tilt succinctly analyzed the results as a risk the Democrats don’t want to take. The harsh truth is that the Arab American and Muslim vote only represents 3% of Michigan’s electorate. That being the case, there is a substantial amount of voters who don’t fall into that group that also voted ‘uncommitted’. This is where Biden finds himself facing an uphill challenge.
While turnout in Tuesday’s Democratic primary was low – just 763,000 voters turned out for Democrats compared to 1.1 million voters in the state’s Republican primary – Trump eclipsed Biden’s total by almost 140,000 votes. To put this in context, Biden only beat Trump by 154,188 votes in Michigan in 2020.
To make matters worse for Biden in terms of the general election, Trump is polling very well in virtually every Super Tuesday state. He’s winning states like Vermont where Independents may play a bigger role by almost 30-points, purple states like Massachusetts by 35-points, and deep red Republican strongholds by margins as high as 75-points.
Further, Biden’s approval rating remains dismally low. Not even 1-in-4 (39%) voters approve of the job he’s doing as president. Moreover, Biden is somehow seen as less favorable than the indicted former president 41% to 44%. This strongly suggests that Biden has a tougher road ahead than Trump to win November’s election.
Regardless of Tuesday’s results, Biden’s bottom line remains the same. He has to walk the tightrope of appeasing ‘uncommitted’ voters while not totally alienating supporters of Israel, which happen to be particularly prevalent in major swing states such as Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona.
On the Republican side, Trump won slightly more than two-thirds (68%) of the vote, his strongest margin to date over Nikki Haley, who squeaked out barely one-quarter (27%) of the vote. While Haley’s survival to this point is impressive, having outlasted former-GOP darlings like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, she has virtually no conventional path to the GOP nomination and high-profile donors like the Koch’s have taken note, recently halting their donations.
Looking ahead, Trump is likely to continue dominating through Super Tuesday, and will almost certainly win the majority – if not all – of those states by double-digits, all but ending the GOP nominating process.
As NBC’s Steve Kornacki described, Haley’s base of support through the first couple of states has been almost entirely powered by Republicans casting their own protest votes against Trump. And while she has proven that Trump’s near-domination of the GOP is not yet fully complete, she has failed to make her own significant mark on the party.
If one thing is clear for Republicans after Michigan, it is that their primary contest is over. Haley is losing by larger and larger margins, even in states with open primaries where Independents can vote.
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At this point, Haley could be forgiven for bowing out after Super Tuesday and setting her sights on 2028, when Trump will be prevented from running, either by his own age or, if he wins, the constitution.
Ultimately, while Haley proved that roughly one-third of the Republican Party wants to move on from Trump, that discovery is hardly the takeaway from Michigan. Instead, it is increasingly clear that Biden faces a not-inconsiderable obstacle within his own party, and will be running against a challenger who has complete domination over the other party.
Whether Biden can successfully appease his fractured party while also appealing to more moderate Independents remains to be seen, but the one thing that is now evident is that where Biden has an enthusiasm problem among his voters, Trump has an enthusiasm surplus, and with that in mind, it is evident that Donald Trump is the front-runner at this point. And, while Trump’s lead may be narrow, it is also undeniable.
Douglas Schoen is a longtime Democratic political consultant.