Now that the primary season has passed through the states where the trees are too tall (Maine), and the states where the trees are too short (let’s say … Nevada?), we’ve finally arrived in the state where the trees are just the right height: Michigan. In addition to Michigan, Tuesday’s primary also includes Mississippi, but most of the attention will fall on the Wolverine State. Mississippi, with a Democratic electorate that’s mostly African American, is something of a foregone conclusion; the only real question will be whether Clinton can top her 77.8 percent from Alabama in Mississippi in order to make this her best state.
Michigan, though, has a much larger delegate haul (130, compared with 36 in Mississippi), and it’s very much a do-or-die state for Bernie Sanders. David Wasserman’s demographic benchmarks actually put it in “must win” territory for Sanders (he sees the break-point at 67 delegates for Sanders and 63 for Clinton for it to be considered a positive for Sanders); Michigan is considerably whiter than the national average (77 percent non-Hispanic white according to the 2010 Census), so Sanders needs to make up some ground here.
Polls close at 7 PM CT in Mississippi, and 8 PM EST in most parts of Michigan (only small parts of the Michigan’s Upper Peninsula are in the Central time zone, so most likely news organizations will call Michigan at 8 PM EST if exit polls are sufficiently one-sided). So Daily Kos Elections will begin its live-blogging at 8 PM EST; please join us then. In preparation for that, below we’ll look in more detail at each state’s delegate allocation rules, polling averages, and some key geographic highlights.
MICHIGAN
Democratic delegates: 28 at-large, 17 party leaders and elected officials (PLEOs), 6 in MI-01, 5 in MI-02, 5 in MI-03, 5 in MI-04, 7 in MI-05, 5 in MI-06, 5 in MI-07, 5 in MI-08, 6 in MI-09, 5 in MI-10, 6 in MI-11, 7 in MI-12, 9 in MI-13, 9 in MI-14 (130 total)
Democratic polls: Clinton 58, Sanders 38 (HuffPo Pollster aggregate)
Republican delegates: 59 statewide
Republican polls: Trump 39, Cruz 21, Kasich 19, Rubio 14 (aggregate)
Sanders, however, doesn’t look to be in position for a win in Michigan or even keeping it within single digits; the Pollster aggregate finds Clinton leading Sanders by a 20-point margin, with the closest poll from a national organization a CBS/YouGov poll from March 2-4, showing an 11-point spread. A 20-point margin would, without doing any fancy congressional district-level math, pencil out to delegate allocation around 78 for Clinton and 52 for Sanders. (There’s a 15 percent viability threshold at both the statewide and district levels, but neither candidate should have trouble meeting that anywhere.)
Keep in mind, though, that much of the state’s African-American population is concentrated into a few of its congressional districts, especially the 13th and 14th in Detroit. In fact, 56 percent of the state’s entire black population is in those two districts alone. Not coincidentally, these two districts have significantly more delegates than the other CDs in the state (9 apiece); there is probably a larger white millennial population in these districts compared with, say, AL-07 or SC-06, so it’s not likely Sanders will be entirely shut out here, but a 7/2 split in favor of Clinton is quite possible in each one. Clinton is also likely to do well in MI-05, where the smaller cities of Flint and Saginaw are located. Sanders, instead, will probably be focusing on MI-12, which has the college town of Ann Arbor in it and has the lowest median age of any Michigan CD (see the chart below); he’ll also be shooting for at least a 3/3 split in the mostly rural, blue-collar, labor-centric MI-01 and holding the damage to 3/2 splits in the other rural or suburban districts with low delegate counts.
MI-01: 91 percent white/2 percent black/1 percent Asian/2 percent Hispanic; median age 46.0; key counties: Marquette, Grand Traverse
MI-02: 79 white/6 black/2 Asian/9 Hispanic; median age 36.6; key counties: Ottawa, Muskegon
MI-03: 80 white/9 black/2 Asian/7 Hispanic; median age 37.1; key counties: Kent, Calhoun
MI-04: 92 white/2 black/1 Asian/3 Hispanic; median age 40.9; key counties: Midland, Isabella
MI-05: 74 white/17 black/1 Asian/5 Hispanic; median age 40.9; key counties: Genesee, Saginaw
MI-06: 81 white/8 black/2 Asian/6 Hispanic; median age 38.5; key counties: Kalamazoo, Berrien
MI-07: 88 white/4 black/1 Asian/4 Hispanic; median age 41.9; key counties: Monroe, Jackson
MI-08: 82 white/6 black/4 Asian/5 Hispanic; median age 37.7; key counties: Ingham, Livingston
MI-09: 78 white/13 black/4 Asian/2 Hispanic; median age 40.4; key county: Macomb
MI-10: 91 white/2 black/2 Asian/3 Hispanic; median age 42.8; key counties: St. Clair, Lapeer
MI-11: 80 white/5 black/9 Asian/4 Hispanic; median age 41.1; key county: Oakland
MI-12: 75 white/11 black/5 Asian/6 Hispanic; median age 35.7; key county: Washtenaw
MI-13: 34 white/55 black/1 Asian/7 Hispanic; median age 35.8; key county: Wayne
MI-14: 31 white/57 black/5 Asian/5 Hispanic; median age 39.5; key county: Wayne
On the Republican side, they won’t be worrying about congressional districts; all delegates are allocated at the statewide level. Michigan has a winner-take-all trigger at 50 percent, but the polls don’t show Donald Trump coming anywhere near that; in fact, the trendline has him well off his peak in January and polling in the 40 percent area now. If no one takes it all, then there’s a 15 percent threshold at the bottom.
And that could conceivably snare Marco Rubio, who’s currently averaging 13.7 percent in the polls as John Kasich has started gobbling up a bigger share of the establishment voters. Also, the lack of congressional district-level delegates hurts Rubio, who otherwise might be able to exploit his friendliness to upper-middle-class suburban voters to eke out some delegates in districts like MI-11. (Even if Rubio completely fails here, though, it won’t be the end of him; no doubt he's still staying in through Somewhat-Less-Than-Super Tuesday on March 15, where he’s hoping for a win in his home state of Florida.) The same could also be said of Ted Cruz, who otherwise might exploit his probable pockets of strength in western Michigan's MI-02 and MI-03, which are the most heavily evangelical parts of the state (though it’s mostly Dutch Reformed voters, rather than the Baptists and Pentecostals you'd usually think of as Cruz’s core backers).
MISSISSIPPI
Democratic delegates: 8 at-large, 5 PLEOs, 5 in MS-01, 9 in MS-02, 5 in MS-03, 4 is MS-04 (36 total)
Democratic polls: 2 Feb. polls: Clinton 65, Sanders 11, and Clinton 60, Sanders 26
Republican delegates: 28 statewide, 3 in each CD (40 total)
Republican polls: 1 Feb. poll: Trump 41, Cruz 17, Rubio 16, Kasich 8
Mississippi doesn’t offer as much drama as Michigan: it should be an easy stroll for Hillary Clinton. According to the one recent GOP-side poll (Feb. 29, from Magellan), it should also be an easy win for Donald Trump, and that makes sense if you think about how well Trump did in Mississippi’s next-door neighbor Alabama (where he got 43 percent). However, if you think about how things went in Mississippi’s neighbor to the other side, Louisiana, then you might see some warning signs for Trump. He got 41 in Louisiana, not much different than he got in other Deep South states, but Ted Cruz shot up to 38 in Louisiana, unlike Cruz’s 21 in Alabama. (Though perhaps Cruz's advantage in Louisiana was some Texas media market penetration into Louisiana, seeing as how Cruz did best in the western part of the state.)
On the Democratic side, there’s a 15 percent threshold at both the statewide and congressional level. The only place where that cutoff is likely to endanger Sanders is in MS-02, which is the state’s only African-American majority district (and, not coincidentally, the district with by far the most delegates, at 9).
On the Republican side, there's also a 15 percent threshold both statewide and at the district level; above that, everyone is awarded delegates proportionately. Unlike Michigan, though, there’s no 50 percent winner-take-all trigger statewide, though it occurs at the district level. It’s tough to see Trump hitting 50 in any district, though if it’ll happen anywhere, it’d probably be in MS-01, which is the most Appalachian-flavored of the four districts. Another district to watch on the GOP side is MS-02, where the few Republicans there punch above their weight because it gets the same number of delegates as the other districts; if you remember the 2014 Senate primary, this area was Thad Cochran’s core area of strength … though there’s definitely no one Cochran-esque in this field, and it's unclear whether their evangelical leanings would push them toward Cruz or their establishment leanings would boost Rubio in the 2nd.
IDAHO
On top of all that, the Republicans are allocating their delegates on Tuesday night in Hawaii and Idaho. There aren’t a lot of delegates in either state, and results probably won’t be available until after East Coast residents have already gone to bed, so Daily Kos Elections won’t really be emphasizing these states in our liveblogging. For completeness’s sake, though, we’ll mention that Idaho is having a primary that closes at 8 pm Mountain in most of the state, and 8 pm Pacific in the Panhandle. There are 32 delegates available statewide, with no congressional district-level delegates. There’s a 20 percent viability threshold, and a 50 percent winner-take-all trigger. There’s only one poll of Idaho from late February, which put Trump at 30, Cruz at 19, and Rubio at 16.
HAWAII
Hawaii’s primary ends at 8 pm Hawaii time, which is 1 am Eastern time. Hawaii allocates 10 statewide delegates, 3 RNC, and 3 in both of the state’s two CDs (for a total of 19); there is no viability threshold and no winner-take-all trigger. There are simply no polls of Hawaii, and Hawaii (which is mostly non-white) is so unlike any other state, demographically, that it's hard to generalize what it might do. Trump seems decidedly at odds with Hawaii's aloha spirit, so it's a question of whether there are more establishmentarians in Rubio's corner, or evangelicals (there are actually more of them in Hawaii than you'd think) in Cruz's corner.