GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Former President Donald Trump swept Michigan’s complicated and chaotic Republican convention caucuses in dominant fashion here Saturday, NBC News projects.
Trump won overwhelming majorities in each of the state’s 13 congressional districts — collecting 100% of the vote in four and more than 90% in nearly all of the others, according to unofficial numbers that party officers reported in real time.
Based on those results, Trump has won all 39 congressional district delegates up for grabs in those districts.
Michigan was a two-part nominating contest for the GOP. Sixteen of the state’s 55 delegates to the Republican National Convention were determined based on results of Tuesday’s primary. The remaining delegates were decided at the convention caucuses.
On Saturday, the Michigan GOP also officially affirmed the results of the primary. Based on those results, Trump won 12 delegates and Haley won four.
In total, NBC News projects 51 delegates for Trump and four for Haley in Michigan’s primary and convention caucuses.
Idaho and Missouri also are holding GOP presidential caucuses Saturday.
Confusion stemming from an ugly Michigan GOP leadership dispute and other intraparty disarray hovered over the proceedings here. As late as Friday evening — mere hours before would-be delegates had to decide where to show up the next morning — there was talk of rogue and rival mini-conventions.
Pete Hoekstra, who has the Republican National Committee’s blessing to chair the state party, organized the convention in Grand Rapids. Kristina Karamo, the deposed and defiant former state party chair, had planned to hold her own convention in Detroit but canceled those plans at the last minute, following a court order barring her from conducting party business. Meanwhile, party activists from several congressional districts announced plans to hold their own gatherings elsewhere this weekend.
“Delegates have been getting conflicting and confusing emails for weeks — promoting different agendas, different staff, different conventions,” Jason Cabel Roe, a veteran Republican strategist in Michigan, said. “You have to pay close attention to even know who is sending what and what the legitimate directions and events are.”
Hoekstra, who served as Trump’s ambassador to the Netherlands, has endorsed the former president’s 2024 campaign and refers to him as the “presumptive” nominee even as Haley continues to campaign. Haley received zero votes in several districts Saturday.
“Part of being a delegate is representing as many voices as you can, and I think that something that allowed me to vote for a candidate that maybe is not as popular is knowing that there are so many people in this room that are for voting for President Trump,” Carter Houtman, the only Haley voter in the 2nd District caucus, said.
Karamo, a prominent 2020 election denier in Michigan who lost a race for secretary of state in 2022, was elected to lead the state party last year. But activists quickly grew frustrated with her financial decisions and fundraising practices. A faction of party insiders voted to oust her in January — a vote that the RNC and a Kent County circuit court judge have said was proper.
Hoekstra maintained all along that his convention would be the one to count, given the RNC’s support and the judge’s order. And his convention drew a huge crowd — hallways at the downtown hotel where it was held were crowded wall to wall ahead of the 10 a.m. start time.
But there were grumblings among some local activists, including those who missed a deadline to apply for credentials while waiting for courts to settle the leadership dispute between Hoekstra and Karamo.
A statement Friday from the 1st Congressional District Republicans in northern Michigan said most of their delegates were denied credentials for the Grand Rapids convention because they missed a registration deadline while waiting for the courts to settle the leadership dispute. The group planned to hold its own convention in Houghton Lake. The chairman of the 4th Congressional District GOP, citing similar credentialing issues, told The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press that he would convene a Saturday meeting in Battle Creek.
“The newly declared administration … appears to be inviting dissent and disregarding rules with the consent of their Republican National Committee allies,” 1st District GOP Chairwoman Daire Rendon said. “We will not play that game by falling into their confusing messaging and backtracking. Denying the majority of the delegates elected at County Conventions in the 1st Congressional District their right to be heard at the State District Convention is not acceptable.”
Hoekstra said Friday that he was exploring “ways to allow delegates to participate on Saturday even though rules for credentialing were not followed.”
Some attendees complained Saturday that the process remained too confusing, especially with activists in several districts attempting to hold satellite conventions, even as other representatives from those districts made the trip to caucus in Grand Rapids. Others were upset about traveling long distances only to have their credentials rejected because they missed Hoekstra’s deadline.
Dan Hartman, who served as the Michigan GOP’s general counsel under Karamo and attended Saturday’s convention, predicted that challenges to the state’s slate of delegates would go all the way to the floor of this summer’s Republican National Convention.
“It’s not over,” Hartman told NBC News.
But Matt Marko, a Karamo supporter and 11th District delegate, stressed the need to move on.
“I wanted Kristina to have a chance to do a good job and she tried hard,” Marko said. “But unfortunately things happen, and now we got to move forward because we got a tough election in front of us.”
