Former president Donald Trump cruised to victory over Nikki Haley in Michigan’s presidential primary election this week. As of 7 p.m. Wednesday, Trump received 68.1% of the vote while Haley took only 26.6%. “Uncommitted” votes and those cast for other candidates only made up about 5%.

Freshman Bradley Haley said he felt the primary confirmed the public’s expectations about the electoral environment this cycle.

“At this point, everyone is bracing themselves for a Trump-versus-Biden showdown in November,” Haley said. “Trump’s victory in the Michigan primary wasn’t a surprise, and serves as another reminder that he has a decisive hold on the Republican voting base.” 

President Joe Biden won Michigan’s Democratic primary with 81.1% of the vote, but 13.2% of voters — more than 100,000 total — cast “uncommitted” ballots.

Haley said the success of the protest vote is evidence of extensive disunity among progressives.

“It was interesting to see Democrats voting against Biden by voting ‘uncommitted.’ Considering the enormously unified cultural and political push in the 2016 and 2020 elections to elect Biden, it’s intriguing that factions of the left-wing are not toeing the line of support for Biden,” Haley said. “It’s interesting to see factions that are more loyal to the victim-victimizer narrative than to any prominent member of their party.”

Senior and College Democrats President Avery Noel said he disagrees, and that he thinks Biden still holds some degree of authority over the party.

“While there was a strong showing from ‘uncommitted’ organized by progressives seeking to shift president Biden’s policy on Israel and Palestine, the president still received huge vote totals and an overwhelming percentage of the vote,” Noel said.

Noel also said he thinks this primary signals more trouble ahead for Trump than it does for Biden. 

“It seems as though Trump has a huge problem within his own party with that selection of Haley voters that will refuse to vote for him,” Noel said. “I saw one poll which indicated that 59% of her supporters who consider themselves Republicans won’t vote for him in the general, which would seem to indicate there’s somewhere between 15-20% of Republican voters who won’t plug their noses this time around.”

A mid-January poll conducted in part by NBC News found more than half of Haley’s likely Iowa caucus supporters would not support Trump in the general election.

Trump performed best in rural counties. He took 76.3% of the vote in Hillsdale County, as opposed to 50.2% in Washtenaw County, where Ann Arbor is the county seat. 

Haley only trailed Trump by about five points in Washtenaw, demonstrating her stronger appeal in more suburban and affluent areas.

Freshman Ryan Rodell said he thinks Haley will drop out once her continued losses begin to seriously impact her brand.

“Once it starts being actively harmful to her, like what we saw with DeSantis — his polls as a governor were being hurt by his campaigning against Trump,” Rodell said. “Once that starts happening to Haley, I think she’ll drop out.” 

Rodell said he believes internal divisions might harm Biden in the general election.

“I doubt that the progressives will be able to handle the zeitgeist and redirect it to make Biden appealing as a candidate of the future, because he’s really seen by most Americans as an artifact of the regime,” he said.

Daniel O’Toole, assistant professor of politics, said Trump’s success in the upcoming general itself is the only remaining variable.

“It went exactly as expected,” O’Toole said. “The question remains, though, as to whether the regime will allow Trump to win.”