Joe Biden vs Bernie Sanders: tomorrow’s Michigan primary just got turned completely upside down
Bernie Sanders is eager to win the Michigan primary tomorrow, going so far as to cancel events in other states, because he’s trying to get his faltering campaign back on track. Joe Biden is just as eager to win Michigan, going so far as to hold a rally with Kamala Harris tonight in Detroit, because he thinks he can put the primary race to bed with a big win.
The thing is, this Michigan race has been shifting more quickly than perhaps any other primary state yet. Just eight days ago, Sanders held a slight lead in the polls in Michigan. Then Biden pulled slightly ahead, as part of his Super Tuesday surge. Now five new polls have Biden ahead by an average of twenty-two points. So what’s really going on here?
For one thing, these new Michigan polls largely don’t include the four major candidates who have dropped out in the past seven days. Most of their support has shifted to Biden, allowing him to open up a large lead. The new Michigan polls fall in line with new national polls, which show Biden surging across the board. Here’s the thing though.
Michigan is an open primary, meaning registered Republicans can vote for Bernie Sanders as a spoiler – and we already know that they will, because they did it four years ago. In 2016, Hillary Clinton had a roughly twenty point lead in the Michigan polls, yet Sanders narrowly won the state, in what ended up being one of the bigger polling errors in modern political history. As a result the media falsely declared that he was making a comeback (he got blown out in Mississippi the same day), and it allowed his campaign to continue for months, even as he fell further behind.
So for Joe Biden and his supporters, it’s crucial to turn out and vote in as large of numbers as possible in Michigan tomorrow, in order to counter any faulty poll numbers of Republican meddling. There’s a reason Biden and Kamala Harris are holding their get out the vote rally in Michigan tonight, and it’s not just a victory lap. But if Biden does win by the numbers being predicted, this primary race will be realistically over.
