February 28, 2024

Let's look at yesterday's Michigan primary results. First of all, the uncommitted protest vote against Biden's Gaza policy had a respectable showing -- but! Close but no cigar: The uncommitted total was about 13%, only a little higher than the 2012 uncommitted vote for Obama, and didn't meet the 15% threshold to earn a delegate at the Democratic convention. It does show room for debate in the Democratic party, and I'm glad to see productive pressure on the White House.

But it is a general rule of politics that when you come at the king, Rashida Talib, you'd best not miss.

Pollsters, as usual (looking at you, 538!), were bigly wrong. Trump is substantially underperforming expectations, with 68.1% against 26.5% for Nikki Haley:

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Still irrelevant, but I really enjoyed billionaire Bill Ackman, the would-be kingmaker, getting his ass handed to him again:

The big news is, thanks to Dean Phillips, Marianne Williamson is back!

Josh Marshall on the protest vote:

It remains the case that the Israel-Hamas war has been highly divisive for the Democratic coalition. The Biden campaign will need to work hard to reunite it going into November. That applies to the Arab-American community, the Muslim-American community and to a lesser but real degree young and non-white voters more generally. This is especially the case in Michigan which has a substantial Arab-American community, is always close in presidential elections and is a must win. Even limited disaffection is a big deal.

My take on this is that both sides got enough that they can feel okay about the result. Neither side has to sulk. Michael McDonald, a political scientist out of Florida, I think summed this up the best when he noted that the number of raw votes in the Democratic primary is almost as high as the purportedly contested GOP primary. He says that the “‘uncommitted’ protest gave other Democrats a reason to vote. While a takeaway may be there is some vulnerability for Biden in the general election, another is the party is overwhelmingly standing behind him.”

That rings true to me. There’s a significant protest vote here – centered on the college campuses and the state’s Arab-American community. But the anticipation of that protest vote spurred a ton of Biden supporting Dems to turnout in a contest they would have otherwise ignored.

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