Former President Donald Trump leads President Joe Biden in Michigan in a hypothetical 2024 general election head-to-head matchup among registered voters, a blow to the president after the state’s primary sent him mixed messages from uncommitted voters.
Trump has 3 points over Biden, 48% to 45%, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday. However, when third-party candidates are factored in, the former president’s lead over Biden expands significantly to 41% to 36%. In a five-person hypothetical 2024 general election matchup including the two front-runners, independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. accounts for 10% of the vote, Green Party candidate Jill Stein holds 4%, and Cornel West saw 3%.
Among Michigan voters, 5% reported they were undecided or refused to answer. Third-party contenders and uncertain voters pose a threat to Biden’s campaign that has not gone unnoticed.
More than 100,000 Democrats voted “uncommitted” in Michigan’s primary, and leaders of the movement spread their message to various Super Tuesday states. “Listen to Michigan” asked voters to cast their ballot for “uncommitted” rather than staying home on election night or supporting a third-party candidate. The group opposes the president’s response to Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Biden won 81.1% of the vote in Michigan’s Democratic presidential primary contest, but campaign officials acknowledged the protest votes had an effect.
“Joe Biden had a really, really strong night tonight. You can’t cut it any other way than that,” Mitch Landrieu, national co-chairman for the president’s reelection campaign, said during a CNN appearance the night of the primary. “That is not to say that the uncommitted vote wasn’t substantial.”
Biden prioritized voters by visiting Saginaw, Michigan, on Thursday as part of a series of stops in battleground states. Biden’s campaign said the president would speak about “the stark contrast between his agenda of lowering costs for Michiganders and Donald Trump’s attacks on working families in the state, including his comments this week promising to cut Medicare and Social Security,” per NBC News.
The location of Biden’s event was kept private to minimize possible protests. However, the “Abandon Biden” movement held a news conference in town, urging the president to declare a ceasefire in Gaza.
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The state has the largest population of Arab American or Muslim voters in the country, many of whom reside in Dearborn, yet no one from the White House reached out before the event to set up a meeting, Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud told NBC News.
In 2020, Biden narrowly secured Michigan with less than 3 percentage points of the vote over Trump. The former president won Michigan’s 2024 GOP primary with 68% of the vote compared with former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley’s 27%, setting up another close race in the swing state.