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| President Joe Biden (D-DE) |
Votes are still being counted (perhaps the most telling moment from last night was realizing we won't have a call in Michigan on Election Night in November if they keep up this pace), and Biden & Uncommitted both largely met in the middle. With 99% reported, it looks like Biden is at 81.1% to Uncommitted's 13.3%. This is...probably in a place where neither side is super happy or super depressed. Uncommitted had set their goal at 10k votes, and were proclaiming a huge victory this morning, but that was insane. Uncommitted got twice that in 2012 and 2020, both of which are elections where voting in the primaries was harder (Gov. Whitmer made it easier for Democrats to vote in 2024), and also where there wasn't a concerted effort to get turnout. I tweeted this, but saying your goal was 10k votes would be the equivalent of your exercise plan being "walking to the mailbox." The goal probably should've been to focus on the percentage of the vote Uncommitted got against Barack Obama in 2012, which was 10.7%. This is a few points north of that, so a bit better...but nowhere near the 15-20% that some were predicting early in the night when they saw early numbers.
What that says high-level is hard to analyze, and political pundits were trying really hard to say a lot with nothing. It becomes apparent in recent months that major political organizations, particularly the New York Times and CNN, have gone out of their way to try to turn this into a horserace, to the point of embarrassing themselves. Harry Enten, a podcast host for CNN, at one point last night tweeted "I feel like I'm missing something here...side note-I continue to think Biden is trouble in the general. Just don't think this shows it." He said this while his network was overanalyzing what was a generally fine performance from Biden, and a slightly underwhelming one for Uncommitted. It was a bit amusing to watch doomerist Twitter users pronounce Michigan dead for the Democrats in the early evening last night while later on they shut up, realizing that most of the late results had favored the president. All-in-all, it wasn't what Biden wanted, but it could've been a lot worse.
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| Former President Donald Trump (R-FL) |
On the Republican side, Donald Trump once again won by a large margin...against a candidate who is a nonentity in the race. For all of the breathless coverage of Biden's margin to Uncommitted, Donald Trump beat Nikki Haley by 41.7 points, a sizable margin, but given he's the de facto incumbent (given how many Republicans believe he was the "true winner" in 2020) and that Haley barely campaigned in the state, it's hard not to think of this as a smallmargin for a guy who is basically running unopposed. This is maybe because, once again, Trump underperformed the 538 polling average. This is the fourth consecutive state he's done this in: Iowa by 7-points, New Hampshire by 7 as well, South Carolina by 8, and in Michigan by around 15 if his current margin sticks. Presidential primary error is common, so I wouldn't read too much into this (average presidential primary error is 9-points, much more than you see in a congressional primary or a general election), but it is eyebrow-raising that the error in every single one of these contests overestimated Trump.
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| Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC) |
All of this asks-what did we learn from possibly the most important swing state on the map given how Michigan has shown consistent leads for Trump in polling, but generally is considered one of the more Democratic-friendly swing states after victories there in 2018/20/22? In all honesty, both sides could use some help. Biden's numbers were weakest in Arab-American populations, and he saw some softness in some of the more progressive suburbs outside of Detroit. Both of these are clear problem areas for him, the former specifically in Michigan, where Arab-American voters make up a small but important voting bloc, while the latter we'll see in the coming days in places like Minnesota if this is duplicated...it could be just a Michigan thing, which will make it easier for Biden to focus. This isn't new news, and his problems with Black voters appear to be somewhat exaggerated (though, again, that would be an area he should probably focus on in Michigan as it will decide the state's winner), but none of this is new news.
Trump, conversely, has a bigger problem, but one the media is largely ignoring (insert your own theory here, but I think the "Trump is good for clicks" argument holds the most water). Haley, at this point, is basically just a protest vote. It is true, yes, that Trump is not an incumbent, and it is true that, yes, as an actual person, Haley matters more than Uncommitted. But Trump's inability to match polling or to coalesce Republicans behind him rather than Haley's zombie campaign is telling. There is a lot of conversation about Biden's ability to get the Uncommitted voters in this race (and those that didn't show up but clearly exist) who backed him in 2020 but are leery of that in 2024 to get behind his campaign. But it has to be said-the Haley voters are a real potential problem for Trump. She's basically running at this point as "we need to move beyond Trump"...it's not hard to see some game to play for Biden in someone who is doing well with "we need to move beyond Trump" Republicans (it's basically how Democrats held the Senate in 2022).
I have to point out, again, that the media doesn't seem capable of understanding this. Polling has consistently shown that Trump is doing better in swing state polls (especially Michigan). But time and time again since 2018 (and certainly since Dobbs in 2022), Democrats have met or exceeded expectations in the Trump Era. It makes sense that media is clinging to a Trump lead for a variety of reasons. It's better for web traffic and it's easier to point to polls as an excuse for why they're sticking with Trump. After all, the media got crucified for ignoring Trump in 2016, and honestly they've clearly never gotten over it. But at some point we need to underline that Republicans are consistently underperforming polling, and that Democrats are over-performing when people actually vote, and wonder if we're under-considering Biden's chances in November, potentially to the point of having the wrong presumed frontrunner.
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| President Biden with PM Benjamin Netanyahu |
Biden's trouble last night wasn't entirely due to voters disagreeing with the administration's behavior in Palestine, but it was the driving force behind the most prominent members of the Uncommitted movement, and got the most press coming out of the night. It's unclear, however, how much the situation in Gaza will matter come November. For starters, President Biden, in an interview on Late Night with Seth Meyers earlier this week, indicated we could see a ceasefire as early as Monday, and signals from Israel are that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is open to that. If true, the biggest attack against Biden will be nullified. Some may claim that this is baked in at this point, but I'll be real-American political elections rarely are decided by foreign policy (they are usually focused on domestic issues like the economy or healthcare), and when they are, they're always about foreign policy situations that impact American lives directly (Vietnam, the Iran Hostage Crisis, the Iraq War). The situation in Palestine does not involve Americans being killed in combat or as part of the war, and it's difficult to see this being a driver of elections if you look at the entirety of American history...something like this has never happened, and to assume that it would still be a factor 8 months after-the-fact (if the ceasefire is achieved)...I'm skeptical.
Also, it has to be said that for all of the handwringing over Dearborn, Michigan...it's not actually that important in most elections. In 2016, absolutely, a few more votes there would've been worth a lot (Trump won by less than 12k votes...a few more votes anywhere would've helped), but in 2022, Gretchen Whitmer improved on Joe Biden's 2020 margin by 8-points...while still seeing her margin in Dearborn decrease by 10-points compared to Biden. It's possible that the mass exodus of the Arab & Muslin populations of the city to the Republicans has more to do with social issues like gay marriage & abortion, and the situation in Palestine is providing some cover for a movement that was happening anyway. Biden should take this seriously, because if he doesn't have Dearborn he needs to make up that part of his coalition somewhere else (and there are persuadable voters to be had in Dearborn, particularly against someone like Trump who has long espoused anti-Muslim rhetoric), but it's not a very big part of his victory (i.e. he's not going to lose Michigan just by losing Dearborn). Kent County (home of Grand Rapids), for example, is 6x larger than Dearborn, and was one of the few counties that flipped in 2020. In 2020, Biden won it by 6-points (compared to Clinton losing it by 3-points in 2016). Whitmer, though, in 2022 won it by 10-points...and last night, Donald Trump couldn't even hit 60% in this fast-growing, blue-trending district that gave Nikki Haley some of her best numbers. Trump's numbers in Kent, for my money, are far more of a red flag than Biden's numbers in Dearborn.
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| Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) |
The under-discussed question about last night is: what is the future for Rep. Rashida Tlaib? Elected in 2018 as a member of "the Squad," Tlaib became the most important & famous figure in the "Uncommitted" campaign in Michigan. Her push is likely why it got so much attention (and why it will be difficult to reproduce elsewhere in other states). Tlaib's stance on Palestine makes her popular in Dearborn, which is part of her district, but actively going against your party's nominee for president is a risky endeavor, particularly in a seat as blue as Tlaib's (she doesn't have the "it's me or nothing" grace that someone like Joe Manchin would have in this situation). After all, Joe Biden won this seat by 30-points in 2020, and is certain to win it again in November.
Tlaib's behavior is unique as well, even within the Squad. Rep. Ilhan Omar got behind the Biden reelection effort quite early, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been actively campaigning for Biden on cable news shows. Biden is not as spiteful as Donald Trump (where Tlaib would've basically ended her political career with these actions), but it's hard to see him not either demanding Tlaib get behind his campaign...or working behind the scenes to push for a primary challenge to her. Tlaib has so far shown strength in the district, so she'd start out in a strong position, but if a challenger wanted to simply run as "Tlaib doesn't back Biden hard enough"...that's a strategy that has worked on the opposite end of the aisle, and might appeal particularly to the large African-American community, who has been largely supportive of Biden, in the district. It has to be noted, though, that Biden will need strong numbers out of Tlaib's district in November; if she's willing to give a cursory endorsement of him this year, he might overlook this in hopes that she'd bring out more blue votes this fall. But without that endorsement, it's hard to see how Biden lets this pass without a bit of payback.
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