What to know about Michigan’s primary election
Michigan moved up its primary contest this year, creating a domino effect for the state’s Republican party that led to a primary and a caucus being held in yet another confusing moment for the US primary election.
The midwestern state’s primary is on 27 February for Republicans and Democrats, who voted to move up the date to meet requests from national Democrats and President Joe Biden to diversify the states with earlier primaries.
Then, Republicans will meet to caucus, potentially in two different conventions because of party in-fighting, on 2 March. At that time, GOP activists will vote on how to allocate most of the state’s delegates, with the other portion of delegates being awarded based on the results of the 27 February primary.
Nevada, too, saw a GOP contest split in two, with a primary that no one won and a caucus won by Trump. The Democratic reshuffling of their electoral calendar also led to an unsanctioned Democratic primary in New Hampshire, where Biden won but the delegates might not count in the end.
How the Michigan primary works this year
Michigan’s presidential primaries moved up this year, which in a year with a better understood electoral calendar and competitive elections would give the state more clout and lead to candidates working hard to win over the state’s voters.
On 27 February, Michigan voters in both parties can cast a vote in person for a presidential candidate on their party’s ballot. They have also had a chance to vote by mail and early in person ahead of election day. Voters need to choose one party’s ballot for the presidential primary.
The Democratic primary will award 117 delegates based on the day’s results.
For Republicans, a week later, the state party will hold its convention, where a caucus will award most delegates. The primary results will dictate 16 delegates, while the caucus will figure out how the remaining 39 delegates are awarded. Only elected GOP precinct delegates and state lawmakers will be able to vote during the caucus. The state’s 13 congressional districts will meet separately at the convention to award three delegates each.
The caucus format is seen as more favorable to the former president and current Republican frontrunner Trump, whose appeal to Republican activists in state parties is broader than his opponents’.
Who’s in the running?
Republicans are choosing among Trump, the former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley and the pastor Ryan Binkley, though other candidates who have since dropped out of the race will still appear on ballots.
Trump is expected to win by wide margins, as he has in all the early states so far.
On the left, Joe Biden will be on the ballot alongside his sole mainstream challenger, the Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips. Phillips has stayed in the race despite low numbers, and Biden is likely to pull off an easy first place.
There’s an effort afoot, though, for Democrats to vote “uncommitted” as a protest. More on that later.
Why is the Michigan GOP election so strange this time?
National Democrats and Biden wanted to rearrange the presidential election calendar because Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two states with contests, are not representative of the party’s constituents. Instead, states such as South Carolina, Nevada and Michigan should be prioritized, they argued, because they are more diverse and more like Democratic voters overall. Michigan Democrats agreed, and the Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, signed off on the law that moved the primary date up last year.
The wrinkle, though, is that Republicans couldn’t just simply move their date up, too, because Republican National Committee rules say that only Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina can hold their contests before 1 March. The state’s Republicans worked with the RNC to come up with the primary/caucus dual format to comply with these rules.
The Democratic calendar changes and their downwind effects have led to some confusion for voters in both parties this year for a few reasons: rearranging contest order has made some early states upset, Republicans didn’t change their calendar to match, and the contests aren’t very competitive so voters have in some cases just tuned out the primaries.
Beyond the calendar problem, Michigan Republicans are dealing with intense in-fighting that could lead to two separate conventions on 2 March, one in Detroit led by the ousted state party chair, Kristina Karamo, who has argued she was not properly removed and is now the subject of a lawsuit attempting to confirm her ouster and get back control of the party apparatus. The other would be led in Grand Rapids by Pete Hoekstra, the new chair.
Because the RNC recognizes Hoekstra as the chair, the delegates awarded at his convention would presumably be the official ones, though Karamo could try to send her own to the national