What Went Down In Michigan, Washington And Other Democratic Primaries

With 100 percent of Election Day precincts reporting, Sanders has won Michigan’s Kent County (home to Grand Rapids) just 49 percent to 46 percent. As Nate mentioned, he won it by 25 points in 2016. Absentee votes there would have to be almost impossibly good for Sanders to match his 2016 win, so it just adds to the evidence that Sanders is well underperforming his previous campaign.

ABC isn’t ready yet to make a projection in Michigan, but they say based on their analysis of the vote so far, Biden is leading. The question, of course, will be what the margin is and whether it’s the Biden landslide that many polls showed in recent days.

Everything I have seen since last Monday makes me think that the Sanders people were counting on a field of three to four candidates for a while — at least through March. They are losing the South in exactly the same way as in 2016. His staff is not dumb, so I suspect they figured another candidate or two would be in the race, reducing Biden’s margins in the South and making it easier for Sanders to win states outside of the South. Instead, it feels like a two-person race against basically a stronger version of Clinton. (Biden seems to have more appeal with non-college and rural voters and similar strength to Clinton with black voters, particularly in the South.) A solid 30 to 35 percent of the vote is great in a three- or four-person field and deadly in a two-person race.