Former President Donald Trump continued his march toward the GOP nomination on Saturday, winning the Missouri caucuses and sweeping the delegate haul at a party convention in Michigan. Idaho Republicans planned to caucus later.
Nikki Haley, the former UN ambassador who is his last major rival, was still searching for her first election-year win.
The next event on the Republican calendar is Sunday in the District of Columbia. Two days later is Super Tuesday, when 16 states will hold primaries on what will be the largest day of voting of the year outside of the November election. Trump is on track to lock up the nomination days later.
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The steep odds facing Haley were on display in Columbia, Missouri, where Republicans gathered at a church to caucus.
Seth Christensen stood on stage and called on them to vote for Haley. He wasn't well received.
Another caucus-goer shouted out from the audience: "Are you a Republican?"
An organiser quieted the crowd and Christensen finished his speech. Haley went on to win just 37 of the 263 Republicans in attendance in Boone County.
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Michigan
Michigan Republicans at their convention in Grand Rapids began allocating 39 of the state's 55 GOP presidential delegates. Trump won all 39 delegates allocated.
But a significant portion of the party's grassroots force was skipping the gathering because of the lingering effects of a months-long dispute over the party's leadership.
Trump handily won Michigan's primary this past Tuesday with 68 per cent of the vote compared with Haley's 27 per cent.
Michigan Republicans were forced to split their delegate allocation into two parts after Democrats, who control the state government, moved Michigan into the early primary states, violating the national Republican Party's rules.
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Missouri
Voters lined up outside a church in Columbia, home to the University of Missouri, before the doors opened for the caucuses. Once they got inside, they heard appeals from supporters of the candidates.
"Every 100 days, we're spending $1 trillion, with money going all over the world. Illegals are running across the border," Tom Mendenall, an elector for Trump in 2016 and 2020, said to the crowd. He later added: "You know where Donald Trump stands on a lot of these issues."
Christensen, a 31-year-old from Columbia who came to the caucus with his wife and three children age seven, five and two, then urged Republicans to go in a new direction.
"I don't need to hear about Mr Trump's dalliances with people of unsavory character, nor do my children," Christensen said to the room. "And if we put that man in the office, that's what we're going to hear about all the time. And I'm through with it."
Supporters quickly moved to one side of the room or the other, depending on whether they favored Trump or Haley. There was little discussion between caucus-goers after they chose a side.
This year was the first test of the new system, which is almost entirely run by volunteers on the Republican side.
The caucuses were organised 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 primary despite calls to do so by both state Republican and Democratic party leaders. Democrats will hold a party-run primary on March 23.
Trump prevailed twice under Missouri's old presidential primary system.
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Idaho
Last year, Idaho lawmakers passed cost-cutting legislation that was intended to move all the state's primaries to the same date in May. But the bill inadvertently eliminated the presidential primaries entirely.
The Republican-led Legislature considered holding a special session to reinstate the presidential primaries but failed to agree on a proposal in time, leaving both parties with presidential caucuses as the only option.
"I think there's been a lot of confusion because most people don't realise that our Legislature actually voted in a flawed bill," said Jessie Bryant, who volunteered at a caucus site near downtown Boise. "So the caucus is really just the best-case scenario to actually get an opportunity to vote for a presidential candidate and nominate them for the GOP."
One of those voters was John Graves, a fire protection engineer from Boise. He said the caucus was fast and easy, not much different from Idaho's usual Republican primary. He anticipated the win would go to Trump.
"It's a very conservative state, so I would think that Trump will probably carry it quite easily," Graves said. "And I like that."
The Democratic caucuses aren't until May 23.
The last GOP caucuses in Idaho were in 2012, when about 40,000 of the state's nearly 200,000 registered Republican voters showed up to select their preferred candidate.
For this year, all Republican voters who want to participate will have to attend in person. They will vote after hearing short speeches by the candidates or their representatives.
If one candidate gets more than 50 per cent of the statewide votes, that candidate will win all the Idaho delegates. If none of the candidates gets more than 50 per cent of the votes, then each candidate with at least 15 per cent of the total votes will get a proportionate number of delegates.
The Idaho GOP will announce the results once all the votes are counted statewide.
Trump placed a distant second in the 2016 Idaho primary behind Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.
