Sao Paulo
According to forecasts, Joe Biden and Donald Trump easily won the primaries of their respective parties in the state of Michigan this Tuesday (27), taking another step towards a direct confrontation for the presidency of the United States in November. However, the Democratic president faced a strong voice of protest against his foreign policy in Gaza and strong support for Israel's military deployment.
In the Democratic Party primaries, Biden competed only with midget candidate Dean Phillips, a congressman from Minnesota. But at the time of publishing this text, the number of blank votes was 13% Biden achieved 80% of the vote. The significant number is the result of a campaign by Muslim and Arab American voters in Michigan who had called for a blank vote to pressure Biden to support a ceasefire in Gaza.
On the Republican side, Trump defeated the only rival still in the race, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, with around 68%. Haley had already suffered a significant defeat in her home state last Saturday (24), when Trump defeated her by a margin of around 20 percentage points. But she says she will remain in the race at least until Super Tuesday, March 5, when multiple state primaries will be held on a single day.
Therefore, the election of Biden and Trump as their parties' candidates for the presidential nomination in 2024 is virtually certain.
“I want to thank all Michiganders who made their voices heard today,” Biden said. “Exercising the right to vote and participating in our democracy is what makes America great.”
“We won Michigan, we won everything,” Trump told his supporters. For him, the results were “much greater than expected.”
Nikki Haley said the results “show the weaknesses of Trump and Biden,” according to the New York Times, and that this pattern will be repeated across the country.
Despite the unsurprising primaries, Michigan, whose most populous city is Detroit, is a crucial state in the US presidential election. This is because it is a swing state, meaning Republicans and Democrats have already brought their 16 delegates to the Electoral College in the last election.
In 2020, Biden won the state by just over two percentage points in 2016, Trump beat Hillary Clinton by a narrow margin of 0.23%. Previously, George HW Bush was the last Republican to win the state in 1988.
As a result, the state is likely to receive a lot of attention from Trump and Biden this year. As the numbers showed this Tuesday, this is where the president must be held most accountable for his decision to vigorously support Israel in its war against Hamas despite the destruction and deaths of civilians in Gaza Michigan has a Muslim and an Arab Expressive American population.
Even with this audience in mind, Biden has gradually toughened his antiIsrael rhetoric, declaring that Tel Aviv currently has no American support for an invasion of Rafah, the southern Gaza Strip city where half of the Palestinian territory's population is concentrated . The Democrat also began talking about a ceasefire, saying on Monday (26) that he hoped an agreement of this kind would be concluded by next week.
Nevertheless, the policy of strong support remains unchanged, both at the diplomatic level, with the rejection of three resolutions for a ceasefire in the UN Security Council so far, and at the military level, with the supply of arms and ammunition and calls for more aid to Israel in Congress .