Finally released more than a week after the initial electoral processes, results from the presidential preference balloting recently conducted by Utah Republicans in place of a more traditional primary show only a narrow win for Donald Trump. He was up against Nikki Haley, a former official on his presidential team who was still an active candidate at the time, dropping out after Trump saw victory after victory in the party’s “Super Tuesday” primaries… a day of voting including Utah.
Trump reportedly received 56.35 percent of the support, while Haley finished with 42.68 percent.
Trump won Utah in the 2020 presidential election, finishing with a majority of the state to just 37.6 percent of the vote for the Democrats. But going forward, Trump has claimed a consistent unity inside the Republican Party that recent election results undercut, with the ex-president also struggling to assemble more extensive bases of GOP support in states like Michigan and New Hampshire, which could be among those most critical to actually winning in the general election later this year. He also struggled in Minnesota and Virginia, finishing in those states, in order, with 68 percent, 54 percent, 70 percent, and 63 percent of the vote in the GOP’s recent primaries when rounding to the nearest whole percentage point.
Incumbent President Joe Biden has received better — though still slightly below-total — support inside his party as Democrats’ primary has proceeded. Biden and Trump have both now reached the convention delegate totals needed to actually secure their respective political parties’ presidential nominations later this year, more firmly establishing the electoral rematch this November that was already expected.
Trump is heading into that race under the still looming specter of four criminal cases, all of which continue despite hurdles like delays to trial that came with Trump’s appeals and a subset of one case being set aside — for now — by a Georgia judge.
