What Went Down In Michigan, Washington And Other Democratic Primaries

In which Galen and I talk about what’s at stake for Sanders tonight (from our respective homes):

If voters love one thing about Sanders, it’s his consistency. “He’s just such a staunch believer — he’s been fighting for the issues he cares about for decades,” Savannah Redlinger, 20, told me as a crowd slowly gathered on the University of Michigan campus for a Sanders rally two days before the primary. And when Sanders spoke a few hours later, his rhetoric was as fiery as usual. “We are taking on not just Joe Biden, we’re taking on the 60 billionaires who are funding his campaign,” he said. “We’re taking on the political establishment.”

Over the past few days, though, there have been some signs that Sanders is trying to draw new voters into his coalition after surprise Super Tuesday losses in states like Minnesota, Massachusetts and Maine. At other events in Michigan, for instance, he attacked Biden on issues like abortion and LGBT rights for the first time. Over the weekend, his campaign also released a plan focused on reproductive health care and maternal mortality — an issue that other candidates, like Warren or Harris, were focusing on months ago and Biden (who came under fire last summer for his longtime support for a ban on federal funding for abortion, which he eventually reversed) still hasn’t addressed in detail.

But there are few signs that he’s changing his overall strategy, except by emphasizing his liberal bona fides in contrast with Biden. That might make it hard to draw in groups that didn’t break his way on Super Tuesday — like white college-educated women — since many of those voters don’t seem to be making their decision on the basis of ideology alone. “I like the ideas, but I just worry that it’s going to be very easy for the Republicans to tar [Sanders] as a socialist,” said Sarah Batzer, 58. She said she was attending the rally with an open mind, but leaning toward Biden.

Other voters, though, were still optimistic that Sanders could widen his coalition. “A lot of my women friends were supporting Warren and it felt like this battle between us, almost a kind of schism,” said Kate Frisbie, 31. “But now they’re voting for Bernie. At the end of the day, we’re all progressives.”

Michigan’s exit polls show that the 2016 Democratic electorate was more college-educated and more liberal than the 2008 electorate — but, at the same time, a smaller share identified as Democrats than in 2008 and a larger share identified as independent. This combination proved especially good for Sanders in Michigan in 2016, as he narrowly won the state in an upset victory over Clinton. The question is whether he’ll have the same advantages this time around, especially among white voters without a college degree.

Unfortunately, due to a sampling problem, Michigan’s exit poll this year will not include the telephone survey that was conducted to capture the opinions of early and absentee voters there, who make up roughly 40 percent of voters in the state’s Democratic primary. As a result, we won’t be using these exit polls for analysis at FiveThirtyEight.