I think that's right, Galen. In a CNN poll back in January, 35 percent of voters said they either don't follow the campaign at all or only pay as much attention to it as necessary. Another 38 percent said they don't seek out campaign news, but do follow the news that they encounter. Only 26 percent of voters said they are frequently seeking out news about the campaign. At this point in the race, voters are not really tuned in. It may be that whatever happens in the primary stays in the primary.

—Mary Radcliffe, 538

Julia, I hear what you're saying, and as a member of "the media," I have an inkling as to why this is happening. The primary contests are not competitive and we have to talk about about ... something ... anything!

To echo what you're saying, just 22 percent of the registered voters in Michigan cast a ballot in the primary last week. In 2020, voter turnout exceeded 70 percent in the general. These are just wildly different electorates.

I often feel flummoxed by comparisons of the midterms to the general, and in the midterms turnout is closer to 50 percent. A general electorate is far less engaged in politics and is — according to polls — more driven by economic issues. And frankly, a big chunk of them find both Biden and Trump unappealing.

So, while I do think there are interesting things to say about the primary, they are not the kind of things that will tell you who will win in November.

—Galen Druke, 538

The Congressional Leadership Fund, which is aligned with the Republican House leadership, has spent several hundred thousand dollars to prevent Sandy Smith from winning that primary again. CLF also spent (unsuccessfully) against Smith in the 2022 primary after several damaging stories about her came out.

—Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections

Not only did she drop more than $1 million of her own money into her campaign, she lives in a fancy, columned, waterfront manor in ritzy Edenton, with its own boat dock and putting green!

—Kaleigh Rogers, 538

On Sunday, Republicans in Washington, D.C., voted for Haley by nearly 30 percentage points in the GOP's party-run primary, giving her all 19 national delegates from the nation's capital. This marked her first victory anywhere in this year’s primary contest, and the first ever primary or caucus victory for a woman in the history of Republican nomination races. Yet the other contests that took place just ahead of Super Tuesday otherwise showcased Trump's strong hold over his party's base. This included victories on Saturday in caucus-convention races in Idaho, Michigan and Missouri, and in North Dakota's Republican caucuses on Monday.

In Michigan, Republicans gathered at Saturday's state party convention to allocate 39 national delegates from the state’s 13 congressional districts (three per district). The voters consisted of precinct delegates mostly elected at the August 2022 state primary as well as Republican elected officials, and they handed Trump all 39 district-level delegates. This result brought Trump's Michigan haul to 51 of the state's 55 delegates, after he had already won 12 of its 16 at-large delegates in the Feb. 27 primary.

The Michigan GOP's split primary-caucus approach came about in part because national Democrats added Michigan to the early part of their presidential primary calendar, prompting the Democratic-controlled state government to shift the state’s primary date into late February. Since the new date violated the national GOP's calendar rules, Michigan Republicans used a workaround whereby the primary results would allocate the state's at-large national delegates, but the state party didn’t formally make the allocation until March, at Saturday’s caucus-convention that also allocated district-level delegates.

Trump also swept caucuses in Idaho and Missouri on Saturday, and then North Dakota on Monday. In Idaho, Trump won 85 percent of caucusgoers, easily surpassing the state's 50 percent winner-take-all threshold to capture all 32 of Idaho's national delegates. In Missouri, Trump won every state- and congressional district convention delegate elected at local caucuses around the state, all but guaranteeing that he will sweep all 51 national delegates when the district and state conventions formally allocate delegates in April and May, respectively. And in a near-repeat of Idaho, Trump won 84 percent of caucusgoers in North Dakota on Monday to claim all 29 of the state’s national delegates.

—Geoffrey Skelley, 538