Primarily Uncommitted

It's a weird one in Michigan tonight. Here's some "just before numbers come in" thoughts. Note - a lot of this is random ass speculation and really is just me talking a lot because I have a lot of anxious energy around the starvation deaths that are about to swamp Gaza in the midst of the Rafah invasion. Maybe it's all nonsense - maybe it's just mindless chatter to keep my thoughts out of the dark space. Probably is - but it's my blog and quieting the voices in my head is why I do this.

Anywho - first off, the percentages are going to be meaningless. Biden is essentially an uncontested incumbent, so his turnout is going to be depressed. Why would primary voters bother when they know Joe has it in the bag? That said, primary voters are pretty committed voters, so a lot of them will turn out - it's just that whatever numbers Joe gets won't really be reflective of his support or of the enthusiasm of his supporters. The only thing the percentages are going to impact is the narrative in the next news cycle. 

The raw numbers will make a difference though. 2012 also had an uncontested incumbent, although one more popular than Joe is now. Obama pulled 170K in 2012 (and he won that general election) - so that's the danger level for Biden. If he doesn't break 170K, that's a red flag. Remember that the issue isn't just people pissed off enough that they want to register a protest vote of Uncommitted - in fact, these votes are less problematic as many of them will support Biden in the general. The issue is depressed enthusiasm and support - people who will stay home in November.

If Joe breaks half a million, that would be a good sign for him. Sure he got 840K in 2020 - but that was a semi-competitive contest.  It was a week after the Super Tuesday coalescing around Biden to stop Bernie - so Biden was the huge favourite by then, but had only been in that position for a week. It was certainly possible to believe that Sanders was still viable then. And while a split of 56% to 36% is a blowout, it's not the 90% you expect for uncontested incumbents. So the 2020 turnout was stronger than we would expect for this year.

Anything in between there - probably not meaningful. My expectation is that Biden breaks 500K and fairly easily. If he breaks a million that would be a crazy strong signal of support. At least IMO.

On the Uncommitted side - the base level for this vote is 20K. It was 20.8K in 2012 and 21.6K in 2016 and 19.1K in 2020. So the first 20K Uncommitted votes are just votes that would have been Uncommitted anyways. The rest are the protests votes - and while this is still not a competitive primary, people voting Uncommitted as a protest are engaged and will likely turnout as if it were a contested primary.

The ratio of general election votes to Democratic primary votes was just under 4:1 in 2016 and just over 4:1 in 2020. So 4:1 seems like a reasonable guess. That said - it's a wild ass guess.

Note that I'm not considering 2008 because that was a screwed up Democratic primary because Michigan wanted to jump the gun and got the New Hampshire treatment.

Anyways, Biden edged out Trump in Michigan's 2020 general by 155K votes. So we now have a shape of what would be bad news for Biden - although the biggest factor is what percentage of Uncommitteds will stay home in November versus how many will swallow their anti-genocide principles and vote for Genocide Joe.

If it's 75% of Uncommitteds who see Trump as being worse enough that they will vote for Biden, that balances out the 4:1 general:primary factor. This is my guess at it.

So the target for Uncommitted to mean anything is 155K plus the background 20K. If Uncommitted breaks around 175K votes, that's the (much larger error bars) level that's the red flag.

Summary - bad news for Biden is if he doesn't break 170K or Uncommitted does. Good news for Biden if he breaks half a million. Great news if he breaks a million. And yes, it is possible that Biden will get more than half a million and Uncommitted breaks 170K. That would be good news - it's would represent high turnout which implies high engagement on the Democratic side which is good.

On the minus side - it is the end of February. None of this means anything because holy shit can things go really bad in the next few months.