Former President Donald Trump cruised to victory in the Michigan Republican presidential primary Tuesday, cementing his sizable advantage over his lone remaining challenger, Nikki Haley.
Trump was declared the winner at 9:01 p.m. by Decision Desk HQ, a minute after the last polls closed. With 28% of the votes totaled, Trump had 66.9% and Haley 28.1%.
Trump has now won all the Republican presidential nominating contests by significant margins heading into Super Tuesday on March 5, when 36% of the Republican delegates will be decided. As expected, President Joe Biden easily won the Democrat primary.
Newsmax reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.
Entering the primary, Trump held a commanding lead in the FiveThirtyEight polling average of 56.9 percentage points (78.7%-21.8%) over Haley, not far behind his lead of 59.9 points (76.5%-16.6%) nationally over the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador.
Before the polls closed, Haley campaign official Olivia Perez-Cubas set a low bar for success, telling NBC News that if she received just 10% of the vote, it would signal there is an "appetite for Trump alternative within the GOP."
The Haley campaign has also argued that Trump has had years of campaigning in Michigan and Haley has been "at this" for just two days in the state, NBC News reported. The closest Haley has come to Trump in the Republican nominating process was an 11.1 percentage points in New Hampshire. She lost her home state of South Carolina on Saturday by 20.3 points. Despite not gaining on Trump, Haley said she is staying in the race at least through Super Tuesday.
Only 16 of Michigan's 55 Republican delegates were at stake Tuesday. Democrats, who control the state government, moved up Michigan's presidential primary – it usually was the second Tuesday in March – to comply with the Democratic National Committee's reworked schedule. Rules set by the Republican National Committee (RNC) mostly bar states from holding primaries and caucuses before March 1.
To avoid being stripped of delegates by the RNC, Michigan Republicans adopted a hybrid system where 16 were awarded Tuesday and the remaining 39 will be awarded Saturday during a caucus at the state GOP convention.
Michigan is seen as a key battleground state in Trump's pursuit for another term in the White House. The former president won the state in 2016 by 10,704 votes against Hillary Clinton but lost it by 154,188 to Biden in 2020.