Trump Crushes Haley in Michigan in March to GOP Nomination

Former President Donald Trump has easily defeated GOP challenger Nikki Haley in Michigan’s Republican presidential primary, according to multiple network projections.

Trump was defeating Haley by an approximately 35-point margin at the time of publication, according to the Associated Press. The defunct presidential campaign of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who dropped out of the race in January, captured just over 1 percent of the vote.

With his victory on Tuesday, Trump maintained a perfect record in the national race for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, as the ex-president has won every primary contest where his name has appeared on the ballot so far.

The win comes after Trump defeated Haley in South Carolina’s primary over the weekend. Haley, the state’s former governor and an ex-U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, vowed to stay in the race despite the home-state defeat and has indicated that she will not be thwarted by additional losses.

Newsweek reached out for comment to the Haley campaign via email on Tuesday night.

Although Trump’s win in Michigan was another indication that the former president’s path to the GOP nomination is unlikely to be blocked, his margin of victory may turn out to be slimmer than expected.

Just before the primary, Trump was leading Haley by an average of more than 50 points, according to polling analysis website FiveThirtyEight.

Conservative political strategist Reed Galen suggested during a Tuesday appearance on MSNBC’s The 11th Hour to host Stephanie Ruhle that Trump’s numbers in South Carolina, where he won about 60 percent of the vote, were a “catastrophic” sign for the ex-president in the general election.

“If you look at … the South Carolina results, there were 25 percent of people in South Carolina, Republican primary voters, who said they wouldn’t vote for Trump,” Galen said. “That is catastrophic, singularly catastrophic for Trump. He can’t lose any more votes.”

Michigan’s Republican primary is only the first part of a two-step process to award the state’s delegates for the GOP nomination. Over two-thirds of the delegates will be awarded during at least 13 congressional district meetings that are set to be held on March 2.

On the Democratic side of Tuesday’s Michigan contest, President Joe Biden defeated a long-shot challenge from Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota by a wide margin.

The incumbent president also overcame an effort by some progressives and Arab-American activists to convince Democrats to vote for “uncommitted” due to Biden’s stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Biden defeated Trump in Michigan’s 2020 presidential election by a thin margin. Most recent polls have shown Trump beating Biden in the state by a small margin in a still-hypothetical general election rematch in November.