Experts say he needs every vote he can muster in key battlegrounds like Michigan and Minnesota, where races can come down to narrow margins.
That makes Super Tuesday’s results all the more striking. Smaller margins have decided recent presidential races in states like Michigan and Minnesota. Under different circumstances experts believe those voters could be mobilized in Biden’s favor, as was the case in 2020 election.
A network of major Democratic donors is raising the alarm about Joe Biden’s performance in Michigan, calling the traction of “uncommitted” in last week’s Democratic presidential primary a “wake-up call” for the president in the critical battleground state.
In a memo to donors shared with NBC News by a recipient, Way to Win, the network of deep-pocketed progressives, urged members to “not try to argue ourselves out of the fact that Michigan is a major warning signal that something needs to change.”
“Michigan’s 100,000+ uncommitted voters in 2024 are a siren, and a clarion call,” wrote Way to Win’s co-founders, Tory Gavito and Jenifer Fernandez Ancona. “The energy behind ‘uncommitted’ is not something that should be ignored, taken lightly, or dismissed as isolated to Michigan. Michigan 2024 is not an anomaly, just as Michigan 2016 was not.”
While Biden won a resounding 81 percent of the vote in the Feb. 27 Democratic primary, about 13 percent voted “uncommitted,” largely over concerns about Biden’s support for Israel in its war in Gaza.
On Super Tuesday, thousands more Democrats voted for either “uncommitted” or “no preference” in six other states.
Polls show Trump leading Biden nationally and in many battleground states as the war in Gaza has heightened dissent for Biden among young people, Muslim and progressive voters inside the Democratic Party.
In a tight race — Trump won Michigan by fewer than 11,000 votes in 2016 — even a relatively small number of voters staying home or voting third party could be decisive.
The Biden campaign, however, has been working to reassure fellow Democrats that they are clear-eyed about their challenges and working to address them.
The campaign just opened its first field office in Michigan, and Biden is expected to launch a campaign swing through battleground states after Thursday’s State of the Union address.
Nikki Haley ends presidential campaign
Meanwhile, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley dropped out of the 2024 presidential race Wednesday after losing every state but Vermont in Super Tuesday’s primary contests, ceding the Republican nomination to Trump.
“I am filled with the gratitude for the outpouring of support we’ve received from all across our great country, but the time has now come to suspend my campaign,” Haley said in a speech Wednesday morning.
Haley didn’t announce an endorsement during her remarks Wednesday. Instead, she encouraged Trump, who is close to having the delegates needed to win the GOP nomination, to earn the support of Republicans and independent voters who backed her.
In response to news of Haley dropping out of the race, Trump slammed his former challenger in a statement.
“Nikki Haley got TROUNCED last night, in record setting fashion, despite the fact that Democrats, for reasons unknown, are allowed to vote in Vermont, and various other Republican primaries,” Trump said, referring to her only Super Tuesday victory.
Trump then accused Haley of raising most of her money from Democrats and urged her supporters to get behind his presidential bid.
“At this point, I hope she stays in the ‘race’ and fights it out until the end!” he said. “I’d like to thank my family, friends and the Great Republican Party for helping me to produce, by far, the most successful Super Tuesday in HISTORY, and would further like to invite all of the Haley supporters to join the greatest movement in the history of our nation.”
In a statement on Haley’s withdrawal from the Republican presidential primary, President Biden acknowledged the “courage” it took to “speak the truth” about her GOP opponent.
“It takes a lot of courage to run for president — that’s especially true in today’s Republican Party, where so few dare to speak the truth about Donald Trump,” he said. “Nikki Haley was willing to speak the truth about Trump: About the chaos that always follows him, about his inability to see right from wrong, about his cowering before Vladimir Putin.”
Biden also urged her supporters to support his re-election campaign.
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