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Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton
A lot of factors are behind Bernie Sanders' upset victory in the Michigan primary this week.
They include:
- Sanders' hammering away at HIllary Clinton over her support of free trade.
- His forceful Flint debate performance last Sunday.
- High turnout, particularly among young people, Independents and voters in Kent County and other western areas.
- Strong backing from African American voters.
- A wave of Sanders commercials near the end.
And anecdotally, I can say there were some other interesting factors at play.
A friend who is an Ann Arbor lawyer says he plans to vote for Clinton in November, but went for Sanders on Tuesday. "My attitude is that Clinton will get the nod but Sanders may be able to push the Democratic platform a tad more to the left while he's still in the race," he says.
His wife, a Clinton supporter, didn't bother to vote because she assumed Clinton would win. All polls indicated she would, apparently lulling some backers into overconfidence.
Another friend, also a lawyer, said he decided to "go subversive" and vote for Trump as presumably the easiest Republican candidate to beat.
Respected pollster Ed Sarpolus of the Michigan-based Target-Insyght , tells me that after he appeared on WWJ radio the other day, he got calls from from Democrats who dislike Trump and said they voted for Trump's Republican opponents to try and block him from getting the nomination.
Sarpolus also find it interesting that Dearborn Arab Americans went for Sanders, a Jewish candidate. The Arab American News endorsed Sanders, noting that he's even-handed on Middle Eastern affairs and spoke out strongly against Islamophobia.
Still, at this point, Clinton still has an edge over Sanders in the delegate count. And the conventional wisdom seems to be that she's still favored to win the Democratic nomination.
That being said, In the general election, Sarpolus says, Clinton needn't worry too much about Sanders' supporters voting Republican. "As you know, anyone who voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary is not going to vote for a Republican in November," he said.
But he said Clinton has to work to make sure those Sanders supporters who are infrequent or new voters come out in November. "She's going to have to figure out how to get them to the polls," he said.
