The Daily Background

As I wrote on Tuesday, nobody is sure how important Michigan will turn out to be on the Democratic side, because of the delegate debacle. Having said that, one of the most populous reliably blue states in the country just had their primaries, so that merits at least a little bit of ink.

Democrats

The Automotive State didn’t really matter so much to the Dems since the DNC voted to strip the state of all 156 pledged delegates it would have originally had, for leapfrogging the primary schedule in an ill-fated attempt to be more relevant (though the delegates may still be seated at the convention in August if a last minute compromise is reached). The results are still important and interesting however.

Not all the candidates agreed to abide by DNC rules however. Hillary Clinton’s name was on the ballot, as was Dennis Kucinich’s. Voters also had the choice to vote “uncommitted,” basically a protest vote for Obama (73% of those who voted uncommitted would have voted for Obama had they had the chance according to exit polls). Turnout was understandably low (less than 600,000 on the Dem side despite the state having more than 7 million registered voters), given that there was no real competition and no thus no excitement or real GOTV apparatuses at work.

The final tally (minus 1% for Chris Dodd, whose name was still on the ballot) was:

Notice anything interesting about the tallies? As I wrote earlier, “I’ve read that some political analysts will consider this a “loss” for Hillary if she doesn’t get at least 60% of the vote with nobody else really running” (Of Kucinich, I said: “By the way, if Kucinich were a real candidate, he’d do well tonight. If he fails to break 5% of the vote even when it’s just him and Hillary, it’d be awfully embarrassing.”)

So even though it was pretty much just Hillary on the ballot, she still couldn’t pass 60% of the vote. In other words, 40% of Michigan Democratic primary voters, or 236,723 people went out in 28 degree weather in order to vote for “Uncommitted .” That’s got to worry the Clinton campaign quite a bit.

So who was turning out to vote Uncommitted (which 73% of the time meant Obama)?

In a sign that Clinton lost the racial tit for tat, Josh Marshall notes, Clinton took only 25% of the African American vote according to exit polls. Uncommitted got almost 70% of the Black vote. And that’s when there’s not even a race in the state and no GOTV operations functioning (FYI, African Americans make up for about a quarter of Michigan’s Democratic voters).

Chris Bowers suggests “This is remarkable… If he can trounce Clinton among African-Americans without even being on the ballot, it seems that Obama has solidified African-Americans behind him nationwide.”

Republicans

On the Republican side, last night’s win gave Mitt Romney the shot in the arm he needed. He’ll get half as many delegates as he would have gotten had MI not broken RNC rules and leapfrogged, but a win is still a win (and at least this puts him firmly in the lead of the delegate race with 42 pledged Ds– Huckabee, his closest rival in the delegate race only has 21). Will he be able to translate it into momentum going into South Carolina, the next big contest on the GOP side (they are largely skipping Nevada)?

Highly unlikely. Sorry Mitt, but your win didn’t give you Mo, it just equalized the field so everybody has a win (okay, Romney won Wyoming too, but nobody really cares about Wyoming). South Carolina is likely to be a race between Hucakbee and McCain with Thompson trying to stay relevant, and McCain now vowing to win it. Undoubtedly Mitt’s speechwriters are preparing another concession speech.

One fun note: Ron Paul got twice as many votes as Rudy Giuliani did.

Filed under: Z-TDB Blog