Ten Thoughts On The Michigan Primary...
...and the forces and factors likely to shape how the state votes in November
The voting in Michigan’s primary is over. The debate over the results and what they mean isn’t.
As you probably know, the main question on the Democratic side was about a campaign to protest President Joe Biden’s posture towards Israel and the Gaza War. A coalition led by Arab-American activists urged voters to select “uncommitted,” rather than Biden, and ultimately more than 100,000 voters in the Democratic primary did.
Was that a lot? And how many of those voters were actually protesting Biden’s Gaza policy?
It’s impossible to answer these questions definitively, because we don’t have exit polls to show what the voters were thinking and -- even more important -- we don’t have analogous votes from previous elections to use as a reliable baseline.
The best we can do is make some observations and educated guesses.
Here are some that I have read or seen on social media.
And now here are ten of mine, as somebody who has lived and written about politics in Michigan for more than 20 years.
1. Uncommitted pretty consistently got around 20,000 votes in each of the last few Democratic presidential primaries. That certainly makes 100,000 seem like a big showing.
But this was also the first year under new voting procedures (like extended early voting) that made participation significantly easier. And that’s not to mention that the dynamics of most of those previous primaries were radically different, with multiple candidates.
In other words, comparisons to most of these doesn’t tell us a whole lot.
2. The one possible exception is from 2012, when Barack Obama was running for reelection unopposed. And rather than focus on raw vote numbers, we should look at percentages. Uncommitted got 11% of the vote then, which is actually pretty close to the 13% it got on Tuesday when Biden was the candidate.
3. But look again at Tuesday’s numbers: Biden’s total percentage was just 81%, because two other candidates (Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson) also took votes.
Obama, by contrast, got 89% of the vote because he was the only candidate on the ballot.
4. My guess is that in any election, there’s a group of people who are going to pick somebody besides the frontrunner. They account for about 10% of the electorate. This year the anti-frontrunner vote was 19% -- i.e., a lot bigger.
And while partly that’s because you had voters genuinely drawn to Dean or Williamson, we know the largest uncommitted voting blocs were in places like Dearborn, with heavy concentrations of Arab-American voters, and Ann Arbor, with large numbers of young progressive college students. Those are the ones most angry and vocal about Biden’s Gaza policy.
All of which suggests at least some of the additional vote against Biden represented an attempt to send a message about his Gaza policy.
5. Figuring out what this all means for November is even more speculative. And it obviously depends a ton on the future of Gaza and Biden’s policy moves going forward. But thinking strictly about Arab-American voters, it certainly seems plausible some of them will stay home or even support Trump.
Still, any analysis of Michigan’s Arab-American vote also needs to acknowledge that it was already shifting in a Republican direction, thanks to controversies tied to gender, sexuality and schools.
In 2022, Dearborn was the site of protests against LGBTQ-themed books in schools -- protests in which conservative Muslims were standing alongside conservative Christians. Not coincidentally, Dearborn was one of the very few places in Southeast Michigan were Gov. Gretchen Whitmer did worse than she did in 2018. In one key precinct, her support fell from 90% to 53%.
You could interpret this a few ways, I think -- that Biden was already losing support in this community, even before 10/7 and its aftermath, and so it was already baked into the political environment. Or you could argue the danger of losing votes here is even larger because of the drift already underway, making the need to win back those voters (or at least some of them) even more important.
One other note on Michigan’s Arab-American vote: Like any community, it’s not monolithic. Among other things, it includes Christians as well as Muslims. The Christians have always tended to vote more Republican.
6. Remember, it’s not just Arab-American voters angry about Biden’s Gaza policies. It’s also progressives, especially young progressives.
That’s why the uncommitted vote was so high in Ann Arbor -- where, by the way, the university was on spring break election day. I imagine the uncommitted vote would have been even higher had school been in session.
8. Gaza isn’t the only issue that could have an especially big effect on Michigan in November. Abortion is another.
It was the decisive issue in 2022, when Whitmer won reelection, Democrats got control of the state legislature for the first time since the Reagan era and voters approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing reproductive rights.
The success of that amendment is one reason many analysts thought abortion would play a smaller role this time around -- i.e., with abortion rights no longer at stake, voters who support abortion rights wouldn’t feel so energized.
But between the Alabama Supreme Court banning IVF, Republicans in Congress balking at laws that would protect IVF nationwide and Trump talking about nationwide bans, it’s pretty clear that abortion access in Michigan isn’t so safe after all.
And Michigan has no shortage of credible, popular leaders to make that case, from Whitmer to State Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who vowed on election night that the activists who led the 2022 fight are “ready to go again.”
9. The other issue to watch in Michigan is electric cars (EVs) and their effect on the auto industry.
Biden and the Democrats have promoted EVs heavily, both by tightening mileage standards and then pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into subsidizing the vehicles. There’s money for companies that manufacture them, and then money for consumers that buy them — in both cases, as long as the vehicles are produced here in the U.S..
The result has been a building boom in electric vehicle factories, stretching from a new “Battery Belt” in the South to Michigan in the North. It’s creating jobs, not just in auto manufacturing but also in construction. And that’s not to mention all the knock-off jobs that these factories will create in local economies — by which I mean restaurants, housing, shops, and so on.
Trump has been attacking Biden’s support of EVs since last year, when I first wrote about it, arguing the transition to electric vehicles will kill the industry, sending jobs to China, and that the cars themselves are terrible to drive. As I wrote last week, the appeal is one part pocketbook and one part identity culture -- because, of course, red-blooded Americans drive only noisy, carbon-producing gas cars.
Biden can win this argument on the merits, I think. The new jobs are real, red-blooded Americans will probably like not having to pay for gas and -- as I’ve said countless times -- electric cars are super fun to drive. Biden is also the most pro-labor president in modern history, having literally walked the picket line with striking auto workers last year and pushed the car companies for better terms on the new contracts.
But I suspect a lot will depend on whether unionized auto workers listen to their president, Shawn Fain, who can vouch for what Biden has done — and remind them of what Trump hasn’t.
10. Trump’s performance in Michigan revealed plenty of weaknesses, especially when it comes to the suburban women who are the backbone of Whitmer’s coalition and played a decisive role in rejecting Trump four years ago.
He could still win here. As Whitmer constantly reminds people, Michigan truly is a closely divided state. But Trump has huge problems of his own.