This hour ABC News can project President Biden will win
the Michigan primary.
But taking a look right now at those results,
you can see
more than 17,000 Michigan voters chose to vote uncommitted instead
of for Joe Biden who received
83,000, a little more than
83,000 votes. Michigan is of course a hotly contested swing
state and always lose large in November.
On the Republican side, ABC News can project Donald Trump
will win the Republican primary there in Michigan.
And take a look now we can see that Donald
Trump is beating Nikki Haley
by more than 40,000 points with
65% of the vote there.
So let's get right to political director Rick Klein.
And Rick, we'll talk about Trump in a moment,
but we do have to get back to what is
shaping up to be the story of the night here.
President Biden and these uncommitted voters organizers to hope for
10,000 votes which was about the difference in Donald
Trump's 2016 win over Hillary Clinton in Michigan and they
got more than that it should President Biden be concerned
tonight.
Yeah Lindsey and they they said a little bit of
a low ball estimate but they do appear to be
far above that pace.
Take a look at what we're seeing so far with
only about 10%
of the vote in we're at about 17,000 uncommitted let's
say that holds in the rest of the state you're
talking about
potentially more votes that's that would be
170,000 votes. Joe Biden only won the state by about
150,000 votes in 2020, So this is a significant chunk
of voters.
And just looking at some of the counties here,
Ann Arbor, the college town there where the University of
Michigan is uncommitted,
is almost 1/4 of the vote in.
We're still waiting on returns in Detroit.
And right outside there, where Dearborn is,
that's where Rashida to leave.
The congresswoman had been part of this,
this protest movement. So there's a lot of votes still
in.
We'll see if these numbers fluctuate,
but this is going to be a major message that's
delivered to Joe Biden tonight by Michigan Democratic primary voters.
You don't know that they're necessarily going to vote for
Trump,
but they're certainly making their presence known,
and Governor Gretchen Whitmer said ahead of tonight quote,
I would say the train is out of the station,
get on board, but it appears a decent amount of
people aren't on board.
So now what? Yeah. Look,
the question is what those voters decide to do and
do they are they just happy with this message being
received?
You know, there's not another candidate out there,
Dean Phillips, down there with just about 2%
of the vote uncommitted means there could be delegates sent
to the National Convention that are not Joe Biden delegates,
but they're not going to really be able to do
anything.
This is their strong statement that they're making.
The question is how that message is received.
And is there anything that happens in the conduct of
the Israel,
Hamas conflict that changes the perceptions of these voters?
Because they are letting people know tonight that they exist
and they were in Michigan and they're willing to show
up and vote.
We are now one week away from Super Tuesday.
Does that change at all Anything or I should say,
does anything you've seen tonight change the calculus for Donald
Trump or Nikki Haley?
Yeah, I know. Look, Donald Trump is is once again
going to be romping through the state.
Keep in mind Nikki Haley got about 40%
of the vote in South Carolina.
She's right now tracking a significantly below that.
We know that she went to a couple places in
the state,
including Oakland County just north of Detroit of the suburbs
there and it's about where the statewide total is.
So we don't see any evidence that she's cutting into
the margins,
and it means she's going to go into this next
round of voting,
this huge swath of states voting over the next week
significantly behind.
She's only truly focusing on a small handful of states
to pick up a few delegates here or there.
It doesn't look like Michigan is going to break that
trend.
She is still not anywhere mathematically on a track toward
the nomination,
and Nikki Haley herself wasn't able to name a state
that she confidently felt that she could win.
Are there any tea leaves out there?
Any indicators to you that there are some states that
she might
possibly be able to squeak out a victory?
Don't hold your breath. Maybe the District of Columbia,
where where there's where the Republicans are,
are a little bit different than the rest of the
country.
This really now is, is a strategy to try to
just go to a few places and really send a
message.
Lindsay, this campaign is not the kind of national campaign
that that goes in there and says we're going to
win in a bunch of places.
They do not have that realistic path.
This is Donald Trump's nomination to lose.
Before I let you go,
anything that surprised you tonight?
Look, I I do think on the Democratic side if
you start to,
if you start to get into what this really represents,
we just haven't seen anything like this before.
There's a history in Michigan of uncommitted being a thing,
but nothing on the scale that we're we're seeing tonight.
Again, we'll see if these returns hold as the night
goes on.
But this is a, this is a major development and
and the first real opportunity for Democrats to vent their
frustration,
whatever it is, with what is the man that is
now the presumptive nominee.
Certainly we've imagined that they're going to get a President
Biden's attention.
Rick, thank you.