These turnout numbers are “off the charts” good for Joe Biden
The Michigan primaries for both parties were treated as something of a horse race by the media because so far, it’s the only contest that there existed some uncertainty about. Although the winners of both were obvious, a few local politicians in Michigan campaigned heavily on voting “uncommitted” as a sort of protest vote against renominating President Biden.
The news media will likely have its own stories about how it played out, but one thing to be careful of is that you’ll likely hear the whole story discussed in terms of raw vote totals, which is pretty misleading at best. One thing to bear in mind is that the turnout in Michigan is off the charts, particularly for a party primary of an incumbent president. 914,000 people cast a ballot.
When all is said and done, President Biden will likely end up with around 81-82% of the vote and “uncommitted” should probably get around 12% support. In short, if the objective was to send some message about the war in Gaza, it didn’t send a particularly loud one. It’s worse when you consider that this is about the same total of people who voted “uncommitted” back in 2012, when there was no such conflict or active campaign to do so taking place.
If anything, having the movement so publicized may have turbocharged turnout in favor of the president and made sure they came out to prevent this actually pretty vague movement from claiming any delegates at the Democratic convention. Oops. It flopped while support for President Biden and his policy in the Middle East remain strong – and it’s long past time for the media to report this accordingly. Let’s vote to re-elect him on Nov 5.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making