Trump defeats Haley in Michigan, his sixth victory in a row

Former President Donald J. Trump won Michigan’s Republican primary on Tuesday, moving closer to a general election rematch against President Biden.

Mr. Biden easily won his own primary, although he faced a groundswell of opposition from voters who protested his staunch support for Israel and his military campaign in Gaza by voting not for another candidate but for “uncommitted ‘. The Associated Press called both elections as soon as the last polls closed at 9 p.m. Eastern Time.

Trump’s victory over Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, extends an unbroken streak in the nominating contests. Michigan is its sixth straight victory, and it is its second, after Nevada, in a state expected to be a crucial battleground in November.

“We win Michigan, we win the whole thing,” Trump told supporters by phone at the Michigan GOP Watch Party after the race was called, according to a transcript of the call from his campaign. He added that Tuesday’s results were “much greater than expected.”

At 10:45 p.m. Eastern Time, Mr. Trump had 67 percent of the vote to Ms. Haley’s 28 percent, while 3 percent had their ballots marked as “not captured.” Trump said in a radio interview earlier in the day that he expected Ms. Haley to “lose by about 80 points.”

Mr. Trump and his team have been keen to look past the primaries, citing his victories in early states as evidence that it is time for Ms. Haley to drop out.

The former president, who faces 91 charges in four separate criminal cases, is also under time pressure as he tries to finalize the nomination. His first criminal trial will begin in Manhattan at the end of March.

During campaign stops in Michigan this week, Ms. Haley also focused heavily on the general election, arguing that she is by far the better candidate to take on Mr. Biden.

In a statement after the race was called, a spokeswoman for the Haley campaign, Olivia Perez-Cubas, said the share of Republican voters who did not support Mr. Trump was a “blinking warning sign for Trump in November.” She also pointed out that since Mr. Trump was elected to the White House in 2016, Republicans had lost the Michigan governor’s mansion. both chambers of the state legislature to the Democrats.

Ms. Haley, who has continued to recruit donors and raised $16.5 million in January, has said she will continue to compete in the Super Tuesday contests on March 5. So far, she has picked up delegates in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. but she lags significantly behind Mr. Trump in the overall total.

Ms. Haley will pick up delegates in Michigan. Sixteen of the state’s 55 delegates were up for grabs Tuesday, and they will be allocated proportionally based on vote totals. Ms. Haley was awarded at least two on Tuesday evening, according to The Associated Press.

But Trump is the heavy favorite to receive the majority of the remaining 39 delegates as he remains extremely popular among Republicans. Those will be awarded Saturday, when rival factions of the Michigan Republican Party will hold dueling conventions after a months-long leadership battle that has thrown the state party into chaos.

Both parties are led by people loyal to Mr. Trump, though state Republicans appear divided among factions.

Pete Hoekstra, a former congressman and former ambassador to the Netherlands under Trump, has been formally recognized as chairman of the state party by the Republican National Committee. Mr. Trump endorsed him for the post after some state party officials voted last month to remove Kristina Karamo, a 2020 election denier who took power last year, from her position.

Ms. Karamo, one of several far-right activists who rose to the top of state Republican parties because they supported Trump’s false claims of voter fraud, has refused to accept her ouster. She has argued that both the vote to oust her and the election of Mr. Hoekstra were illegal.

A judge on Tuesday essentially ordered Ms. Karamo to step aside. He ruled that she had been legitimately removed from her position and ordered her not to present herself as leader of the state party or conduct business in the party’s name. But Ms. Karamo did not tell reporters whether she planned to abandon her plans for a conference on Saturday.

Trump did not campaign heavily before the Michigan primary; he held only one meeting here this year. But the state is expected to be critical in November, after the last two elections.

Trump won the state by nearly 11,000 votes in 2016, allowing him to defeat Hillary Clinton and win the White House. Four years later, Mr. Biden defeated him in Michigan by a whopping 154,000 votes — and in 2022, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat who strongly supported Mr. Biden, headed for reelection as Democrats took control of the Legislature.

In a statement on Tuesday, Mr Biden briefly celebrated his victory in the Michigan primary, then almost immediately turned to attacking Mr Trump in a preview of their general election battle.

Mr. Trump targeted Michigan in his bid to overturn his 2020 election loss, and Michigan’s attorney general filed 16 felony charges last year for falsely portraying themselves as the state’s voters. Those Republicans were part of a larger scheme to create fake voter rolls promised to Mr. Trump in battleground states he lost to Mr. Biden.

The former president campaigned for the White House again this year and continued to promote the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Nicholas Nehamas reporting contributed.