While former President Donald Trump is comfortably marching toward his nomination as a Republican candidate for the 2024 presidential election, this Tuesday's Michigan primary election against his rival Nikki Haley poses a political danger for him.
Despite his undoubted dominance over the Republican Party, Trump faces in Michigan an important bloc that has voted against him in past elections.
This could favor Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and ambassador to the UN who is the only major Republican candidate who is posing as an alternative to the former president in the primaries, and who is still waiting for a victory in the race.
Michigan, a state that will be vital to winning the November general elections, will be the last electoral duel between Trump and Haley before the so-called
Super Tuesday
, when a third of the delegates will be assigned to the Republican National Convention that will choose the party's presidential nominee.
The outcome of that day's races could be decisive for the viability of Haley's candidacy.
A voter casts their ballot on the last day of early voting at a polling station in Detroit, on Feb. 25, 2024.Emily Elconin / Bloomberg via Getty Images
In this Tuesday's election, 16 delegates are at stake.
But another 39 will be distributed at a state party convention next Saturday.
Trump aspires to take the delegates to strengthen his candidacy and face whoever wins the Democratic race, which has been dominated by the president, Joe Biden, who also faces his own challenges in the Michigan Democratic primary this Tuesday.
Polls suggest Trump will beat Haley in Michigan, but his campaign is expected to pay special attention to the race in the so-called swing state, where the former president lost to Biden by just three percentage points in 2020.
Former President Donald Trump speaks in Columbia, South Carolina, on February 24, 2024. Associated Press
These are the key counties in the race between Trump and Haley:
The Dutch presence
West Michigan is home to the largest concentration of Dutch Americans in the country, and five counties (Muskegon, Ottawa, Kent, Allegan and Kalamazoo) constitute its heart.
For complex reasons dating back to a split in the Dutch Reformed Church and a great 19th-century migration from Holland, the strong Dutch influence in this area has created a distinct political culture: conservative and traditionally Republican, but also
unusually Trump-averse
. explains our sister network NBC News.
In the 2016 Michigan primary, Trump won the state with 37% of the vote.
But in these five counties combined, he barely managed 23%, coming in second in two of them (Allegan and Muskegon) and third in three (Kalamazoo, Kent and Ottawa).
This is especially surprising given that, in total, Trump won 72 of the state's 83 counties, according to NBC News.
Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley speaks to voters in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Feb. 26, 2024. Associated Press
For Haley, that makes raising scores in these counties – which together will account for about one in six votes cast statewide – absolutely critical.
Special attention should be paid to the two largest counties: Kent (where Grand Rapids is located) and Ottawa (which includes much of the city of Holland and its highly populated surrounding areas).
A territory dominated by Trump
Geographically, Northern Michigan is a huge region, encompassing almost everything beyond Grand Rapids and Saginaw.
But they are largely sparsely populated rural counties that together will only account for about 15% of the statewide vote.
Still, with few exceptions, they are at the center of the universe that makes up Trump voters: high concentrations of white voters without a college education,
a group in which the former president has enjoyed great support
.
Trump turned many of these counties red in 2016, often posting 20- to 30-point improvements over then-Republican candidate Mitt Romney's results in 2012, helping Trump become the only Republican since 1988 to win Michigan in the general elections.
This Tuesday night, one should closely watch how much Trump is winning in these counties and how his voter participation levels compare to the rest of the state.
The more Trump can create a cushion of votes in that region, the more shielded he will be from his vulnerabilities elsewhere in the state.
Two suburban counties
Macomb and Oakland are the two largest suburban counties of Detroit, each separated from the big city by the famous 8 Mile Road.
Together, they will represent about a quarter of the state's primary electorate, but both reflect two very different voter bases: one favorable to Trump and another hostile to him.
Macomb is where Trump should get big results.
It is a middle and working class county, with a proportion of white voters without a college degree of 58%, higher than the state average.
The region was essential for Trump to win the state in 2016 (after voting twice for Barack Obama, Macomb went for Trump by 12 points).
The former president won that county again in 2020, but Biden won the state.
In the 2016 Republican Party primaries, Trump accumulated 48% of the votes there, almost 10 points more than his result at the state level.
Of the state's 83 counties, Macomb was Trump's 10th-strongest in 2016.
Oakland, for its part, is the more luxurious of the two counties, with the fourth-highest average household income in the state.
Its
concentration of white voters with college degrees
, at 36%, is among the highest in the state, and unlike Macomb, it aligned strongly against Trump in the 2016 and 2020 general elections.
In the 2016 primary, Oakland gave the most moderate candidate in the Republican race at the time, John Kasich, his second-best showing in the state.
This is demographically fertile ground for Haley.
We'll have to watch closely to see if Haley does, in fact, win Oakland County on Tuesday night, and whether that victory can offset Trump's very likely victory in Macomb.
With information from
The Associated Press
and
NBC News