LIATHANO RAMIREZ
GRAPHIC DESIGNER
NAYONIKKA SINGHAAL
STAFF WRITER
1/29/2024
The polling for the presidential elections began on Jan. 15, and will continue until Sept. 10. It is important to keep up with the election events in order to be able to make an informed vote come November.
Michigan to its core remains a swing state when it comes to elections, and it is unclear each year whether the state will be blue or red.
“There are a lot of conservative populations so Michigan could potentially go red, but the Metropolitan areas like Detroit have more democratic areas which makes it hard to determine Michigan’s choice of candidature,” says Emily Patzkowsky (‘25) a double major in Political Science and Economics.
As campaigning continues, there is tough competition within the parties to elect a representative; on the Democratic side, Biden, Phillips, Uygur and Williamson are the running candidates. However, the soaring victory for Biden in New Hampshire reassures his followers of his chances of being the official Democrat candidate.
With the campaign suspension of Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley remains the only true Republican contender against former president Donald Trump.
“At this point, it does not appear that Nikki Haley has a great chance of derailing Donald Trump. Whether or not she is able to stay in the race if she doesn’t do well [and] whether or not she is able to stay in the race in New Hampshire is an open question. I think she has to be relatively close or the money will run out for her,” said Sandy Hulme, Arthur L Russell Professor of Political Science.
The results of New Hampshire aligned with Hulme’s prediction with Trump winning 54.3% of votes and Haley being a close second.
It can be further noted that there are 91 criminal indictments against Trump and it has yet to be decided when will these criminal prosecutions be moving forward, but if the elections in Iowa indicated anything then if Trump is convicted on any of those charges before elections there will be a significant loss for him from his base which would change the trajectory of the elections.
Moreover, Colorado and Maine made the decision that Trump acted as an insurrectionist and that is the one act a person can commit that would prevent them from holding the office of presidency. This remains on the Supreme Court to decide whether Colorado and Maine acted in a constitutional way or not. Meanwhile, Trump’s defense lawyers and supporters argue that his words were not a call of actual violence thereby not making it lawless.
One of the driving forces of leaving Trump off the ballot comes from Project 2025 which endorsed a changed approach from their traditional ways of limiting federal government by cutting federal taxes, to flooding the grounds with conservatives as claimed by Paul Dans, the director of Project 2025. The main aim is to oust the federal employees who stand in the way of the president’s agenda and replace them with like-minded individuals.
“The election of 2024 will be a very interesting one because there is one candidate who has openly said that he is willing and in fact interested in moving away from fundamental democratic principles, so we are no longer talking about different economic philosophies or approaches to social issues but, in a very real sense, the future of American democracy is on the ballot,” said Hulme.
The Almanian: News 
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