What the first swing-state primary in Michigan told us about Biden-Trump rematch
CBC
After Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, a major swing state has finally voted in a 2024 U.S. presidential primary, offering some electoral tea leaves to read.
The main takeaway from Tuesday's Michigan primary: Two vulnerable candidates are barrelling toward the nomination of their respective parties.
Joe Biden and Donald Trump each cruised to victory in Tuesday's vote. But the results also revealed blinking warning lights up ahead.
Here are the takeaways. With one positive, and one negative, for each of the likely presidential nominees.
There has been evidence for months that the war in Gaza has angered many Democrats, and risks costing Biden some of the votes behind his 2020 victory.
Tuesday night was the first major electoral test of that, in the swing state with the highest population of Arab Americans.
A large number of Michiganders turned out to protest Biden's support for Israel: with half the votes counted overnight, approximately 14 per cent of Democratic voters had lodged a protest vote – about 100,000 declared themselves uncommitted.
This followed a campaign by progressives and Democrats like congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, who said their goal was to send Biden a warning.
"This is the way we can use our democracy to say, 'Listen. Listen to Michigan. Listen to the families that have been directly impacted,'" said Tlaib, who is of Palestinian origin and has relatives there.
On Tuesday night, organizers of the protest immediately declared victory.
It was the largest-ever number of such uncommitted voters in a Michigan primary, with the exception of an unusual intra-party dispute in 2008 where several candidates, including Barack Obama, didn't appear on the primary ballot.
It was also the largest percentage to ever vote uncommitted in Michigan, surpassing the 10.7 per cent who did so when Obama was up for re-election in 2012.
Those numbers will cause some hand-wringing in the White House, given how a protest vote in November could easily swing the election in closely-fought states.
Michigan is a prime example of a state where almost every vote counts.
