Former President Donald Trump ran away from Michigan’s Republican primary on Tuesday night, edging out rival Nikki Haley and securing his sixth straight victory in the Republican race.
In the Great Lakes state, Trump, 77, won 65% of the vote, compared to 30.9% for Haley. The former president currently beats Haley by double digits in five states and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Despite a series of defeats, the former South Carolina governor has vowed to remain in the presidential race until at least Super Tuesday, March 5, when 16 primaries and caucuses will yield 874 delegates. .
Haley, 52, appealed to Michigan voters the morning after losing Saturday’s South Carolina primary by 20 points, saying polls show she is the only candidate who can defeat President Biden in the general election. insisted.
Haley also claimed the former president was “totally divided” within the Michigan Republican Party over claims that election fraud robbed him of victory in 2020.
On Tuesday morning, Haley declined to define what a “defeat” would be at Michigan State, but said the goal is to remain “competitive.”
“We keep saying our goal is to be competitive. It’s always been about being competitive. And if we’re getting 40% in every early state, it means something. There is,” she told CNN News Central.
For Trump, who has shifted his rhetoric to focus less on Haley and more on the general election, Michigan is a place to predict how he will fare in the battleground state in November.
The 77-year-old first visited the Wolverine State in September, when other Republican candidates were facing off in the second primary debate in California. Trump then returned to Michigan on February 17th to make his final pitch to voters in the battleground state.
Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in Michigan in 2016 by just over 10,000 votes, but lost to Biden in Michigan in 2020 by just over 154,000 votes.
Mr. Trump leads Mr. Biden by 2 percentage points in the state, with 10% of voters undecided, according to an Emerson College Poll and The Hill poll released Monday.
The president also won Michigan by a wide margin on Tuesday night, defeating Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.).
Michigan’s primary election has been moved up after Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer agreed to move the state to No. 3 on the party’s official calendar, as proposed by President Biden.
The date change prompted state Republicans to coordinate with the Republican National Committee to come up with a plan that would not violate RNC rules prohibiting early contests.
The Republican compromise resulted in a Tuesday primary to decide how to award 16 of the state’s 55 delegates, with the remaining 39 delegates to be awarded at the state convention on Saturday.
