U.S. President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump won their respective party primaries in the state of Michigan Tuesday.
Both were widely expected to win, but the margins of those victories were closely watched as signs of support for the two candidates in the key state, ahead of their likely rematch of the 2020 presidential election won by Biden.
With nearly all of the votes counted in the Democratic presidential primary early Wednesday, Biden led with 81%, while 13% of voters chose “uncommitted.”
Michigan is home to the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the country, and opposition to Biden’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza against Hamas militants led some Democrats to call for voters to select “uncommitted” instead of casting a vote for Biden.
Supporters of the effort for “uncommitted” ballots said they were hoping for 10,000 such votes, a level that was easily surpassed with the tally at more than 100,000.
In the Republican presidential primary, Trump had 68% of the vote compared to about 27% for former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley with nearly all of the ballots counted early Wednesday.
Trump won the political battleground state in the 2016 national election in his successful run for the presidency, but Biden defeated him there in 2020, helping him turn back Trump’s reelection effort.
Haley has remained in the race despite not winning any of the states contested so far. She has argued that American voters do not want a Biden-Trump rematch in the November election and that if it occurs, Trump would lose a second time to Biden.
Haley has said she will fight on until at least the Super Tuesday contests on March 5 that involve 15 states, two territories and one-third of the overall delegates at stake in the Republican race.
Republicans will formally name their presidential candidate during a national convention in July. Democrats will follow with their convention in August.
Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters
