Trump wins the Missouri caucuses. Republicans in Michigan and Idaho are weighing in on the 2024 race

(Summer Ballentine/Associated Press)

Trump wins the Missouri caucuses. Republicans in Michigan and Idaho are weighing in on the 2024 race

JONATHAN J. COOPER

March 2, 2024

Donald Trump won the Republican caucuses in Missouri, one of three events that awarded delegates for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination on Saturday.

The former president also made gains at a party conference in Michigan. Idaho held caucuses later Saturday. His last great rival, former

United NationsU.N.

Ambassador Nikki Haley is still looking for her first victory of the election season.

There were no Democratic contests on Saturday.

The next event on the Republican calendar is Sunday in the District of Columbia. Two days later is Super Tuesday, when sixteen states and American Samoa will hold primaries on what will be the largest voting day of the year, excluding the November election. Trump is on track to clinch the nomination days later.

Michigan

Michigan Republicans began assigning 39 of the state’s 55 GOP presidential delegates at their convention in Grand Rapids. Trump won 33, six of which had yet to be allocated.

But a significant portion of the party’s rank and file skipped the meeting due to the lingering fallout from a months-long dispute over the party’s leadership.

Trump handily won the Michigan primary

load

Tuesday with 68% of the vote, compared to Haley’s 27%.

Michigan Republicans were forced to split their delegate allocation in two after Democrats, who control the state government, moved Michigan into the early primary states, violating national Republican Party rules.

Missouri

Voters lined up outside a church in Columbia, home to the University of Missouri, before the doors opened for the caucuses.

I don’t know what my role will be here other than standing in a corner for Trump, said Columbia resident Carmen Christal, adding that she is just looking forward to the experience of it.

This year it was

Unpleasant

would be the first test of the new system, which is run almost entirely by volunteers on the Republican side.

The caucuses were organized after GOP Gov. Mike Parson signed a 2022 law that, among other things, canceled the planned March 12 presidential primary.

Lawmakers failed to reinstate the primaries despite calls to do so

both

state leaders of the Republican and Democratic Parties. Democrats want to hold a party-led primary

on

March 23. Trump prevailed twice under Missouri’s old presidential primary system.

Idaho

Last year, Idaho lawmakers passed cost-cutting legislation intended to move all states’ primaries to the same date in May, but the bill inadvertently eliminated presidential primaries entirely.

The Republican-led Legislature considered holding a special session to restore presidential primaries but failed to agree on a proposal in time, leaving presidential caucuses as the only option for both parties.

The Democratic caucuses are on May 23.

The last Republican caucuses in Idaho were in 2012, when about 40,000 of the states (nearly 200,000 registered Republican voters) showed up to select their preferred candidate.

This year, all Republican voters who want to participate will have to attend in person. They will vote after hearing short speeches from the candidates or their representatives.

The Idaho Republican Party will announce results once all votes have been counted statewide. Trump finished a distant second in the 2016 Idaho primary, behind Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.

Cooper is a reporter with the Associated Press. AP writers Rebecca Boone in Boise, Idaho; Joey Cappelletti in Lansing, Michigan, and Summer Ballentine in Jefferson City, Missouri, contributed to this report.

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