Biden and Trump to face tests in Michigan’s primaries

While Joe Biden and Donald Trump are marching toward their respective presidential nominations, Michigan’s primary on Tuesday could reveal significant political perils for both of them.

Trump, despite his undoubted dominance of the Republican contests this year, is facing a bloc of stubbornly persistent GOP voters who favour his lone remaining rival, former

UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, and who are sceptical at best about the former president’s prospects in a rematch against Biden.

As for the incumbent president, Biden is confronting perhaps his most potent electoral obstacle yet: an energized movement of disillusioned

voters upset with his handling of the war in Gaza and a relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that

critics say has been too supportive. Those dynamics will be put to the test in Michigan, the last major primary state before Super Tuesday and a critical swing state in November’s general election.

Even if they post dominant victories as expected on Tuesday, both campaigns will be looking at the margins for signs of weakness in a state that went for Biden by just 3 percentage points last time.

Biden said in a local Michigan radio interview on Monday that it would be “one of the five states” that would determine the winner in November.

Michigan has the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the nation, and more than 310,000 residents are of Middle Eastern or North African ancestry.

Nearly half of Dearborn’s roughly 110,000 residents claim Arab ancestry.

It has become the epicentre of Democratic discontent with the White House’s actions in the Israel-Hamas war, now nearly five months old, following Hamas’ deadly October 7 attack and kidnapping of more than 200 hostages.