Michigan’s presidential primary reveals the magnitude of President Joe Biden’s collapse. Leftists in the state successfully drew more than 100,000 votes away from the president, far more than the 10,000 protest votes they expected.
However, the focus on those who voted “uncommitted” in the state’s Democratic primary shows just part of the picture. It is the Democratic no-shows and the surge in Republican voters that plumb the true depth of Biden’s, and potentially Democrats’, fall. Biden did not simply turn many Democrats into “uncommitted” votes; he is turning them off completely — or possibly into Republicans.
Although both Biden and former President Donald Trump still won their respective primaries easily, Tuesday’s Michigan primary still produced fascinating results. For the Democrats, the story was disaffected Democrats expressing their dissatisfaction over Biden’s approach to the Israeli-Hamas conflict, with elected Democrats such as Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) leading a charge against their president. For Republicans, the story was Trump vs. Haley, the only thing thus far remotely resembling a race in this year’s campaign.
Biden won his primary with 81% of the vote, but “uncommitted” protest votes ended up being 13.2% of the total cast. Trump won his primary with 68% of the vote, more than doubling Haley’s 26.6% and raising questions of how long she can remain in and why.
But a closer look at Michigan’s results and a far more disturbing outcome emerges for Biden and Democrats.
In 2020’s Michigan primary, Biden “beat” Trump (that is, he drew more voters on the Democratic side than Trump did on the Republican side) by almost 200,000 votes: 840,360 votes to 640,522. This year, however, Trump “beat” Biden by almost 140,000 votes: 759,280 to 623,500. That’s an enormous swing. But it pales in comparison to an even bigger one.
In 2020’s Michigan primary, Democratic votes totaled 1,578,945; Republicans’ votes totaled 679,364. In Tuesday’s contest, Democratic votes fell to 768,947, less than half their 2020 total. In contrast, Republican votes soared to 1,114,912, almost two-thirds more. And while Democrats outpolled Republicans by nearly 900,000 votes in 2020, Republicans recorded almost 350,000 more votes in 2024.
Simply put: These are massive swings. And they could have massive repercussions for a November election still eight months away.
We already had an idea from national polling that Biden was in trouble. According to the RealClearPolitics Feb. 29 average of national polling, Biden trails Trump 45.1 to 47.1 in a two-way race and 38 to 41 in a five-way race. But seeing how voters respond in polls is one thing; seeing how they respond at the polls is another. As Michigan shows, it is in fact entirely different.
Biden’s support has utterly collapsed among Michigan’s Democrats. And Democrats’ participation has collapsed even more. Yes, more than 100,000 leftists still cast Democratic ballots last Tuesday, but almost 810,000 Democratic voters did not show up at all. Explicitly and implicitly, that is more than 900,000 who did not vote for, or show up for, Biden.
Michigan Democrats have to ask themselves: Where do almost a million Democrat voters go come November? They face three deeply disturbing answers. One is that they vote for a third-party protest candidate, as did the over 100,000 uncommitted voters of last Tuesday. Another is that they vote for Trump, as did almost 120,000 more Michiganders. A final one is that they do not vote at all.
Trump’s 2024 support has skyrocketed over that of 2020: by almost 119,000 votes, more than 15% higher. But Republicans’ support surged higher still: 64% over 2020’s total. Under the logical assumption that those additional voters are going to go more heavily for Trump than Biden in November, then the president’s Michigan hole is deeper still. And if that surge in Republican voters, and that precipitous drop in Democratic voters, holds in November, then Democrats’ political pit is the size of the Grand Canyon.
Going into Tuesday, we thought we knew the electorate and the election: The race was neck and neck in the national polls, and the contest would be decided in six battleground states. According to RealClearPolitics’s average of polling in each of these six states, Trump leads in all but Pennsylvania (where he trails by less than 1 percentage point) with leads as large as 7.7 percentage points in Nevada, 6.5 percentage points in Georgia, and 5.5 percentage points in Arizona.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Michigan is one of those six battleground states from which Trump needs to wrest just 35 electoral votes to flip the 2020 outcome. Yes, Michigan has a high Muslim population, and they were encouraged by the likes of Tlaib to vote against Biden. However, 810,000 Democrats from 2020 didn’t vote at all, and almost 440,000 more Michiganders decided to vote Republican instead.
If Michigan is even remotely an indication, these battleground states may turn out not to be battlegrounds at all — because Democrats may either turn out against Biden or simply not turn out at all.
J.T. Young was a professional staffer in the House and Senate from 1987-2000, served in the Department of Treasury and Office of Management and Budget from 2001-2004, and was director of government relations for a Fortune 20 company from 2004-2023.