Trump scores another convincing win against Haley in Michigan primary

Donald Trump has won Michigan’s Republican primary election, the latest in a string of convincing primary victories as he closes in on the GOP presidential nomination.

The Associated Press called the race for Trump over the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley at 9pm ET.

The former president has repeatedly trounced Haley in the primaries, but she has hung on with a campaign that continues to highlight areas of weakness for Trump and offers Republicans uneasy about Trump a protest vote of their own. Haley has pledged to stay in the primaries at least through next Tuesday, 5 March, when 15 states will vote and Trump could all but sew up the Republican nomination.

With almost 99% of the vote counted, Trump had received 68.2% to Haley’s 26.5%.

Trump did not travel to the state Tuesday night. He instead called into a Michigan GOP election night watch party in Grand Rapids, where he stressed the importance of the state in the general election and said the results Tuesday evening were “far greater than anticipated.”

“We have a very simple task: We have to win on Nov. 5 and we’re going to win big,” Trump said, according to a campaign transcript. “We win Michigan, we win the whole thing.”

But there are some warning signs for Trump in his easy victory in Michigan.

Early reporting out of Kent county, which flipped to Biden in the 2020 presidential election, showed Trump with a slimmer margin of victory. That part of the state is significant to the conservative movement and home to the conservative mega-donors the DeVoses.

Haley’s strongest performance Tuesday night came in areas with college towns like Ann Arbor, home to the University of Michigan, and suburbs around Detroit and Grand Rapids.

Speaking at a press conference in Grand