Ed Kilgore said it well before the MI primary:
Let's hope the exit polling from Michigan is well conducted. It may tell us a lot about the rest of the Democratic nominating contest, and particularly whether what has looked to be a demographically doomed Sanders campaign can make a real fight of it.
A key demographic that has favored Secretary Clinton, indeed has given her staggering margins in many of her wins, is African Americans. It is not merely that she was won that demographic, but that she has won it by as much as 85%. This graphic was created by Nate Silver:
AA margins for Secretary Clinton
Secretary Clinton also won the AA vote in MI, though by a lower margin than her wins elsewhere, a still impressive 35%. Surprisingly, as Cark Bialik of FiveThirtyEight.com noted last night, that that is exactly what polling has shown her margin to be outside the South:
Most of the previous primary states with enough black voters to measure their presidential preferences in exit polls were in the Southeast and the Southwest. In those regions, Clinton led Sanders among black Democratic voters by 73 percent to 19 percent, or 54 percentage points, in an aggregation of all polls so far this year by Reuters. Everywhere else, her lead narrowed to 35 percentage points: 64 percent to 29 percent. Clinton’s lead in Michigan among black voters is exactly that: 35 percent.
Though impressive, this 35 point margin is a full 19 points lower than her margins in the South. This suggests that, outside the South, Sanders will perform better among AAs.
But AAs are not the only demographic group that was more favorable to Bernie in MI than polls suggested they would be. Monmouth University pollster Patrick Murray said that his biggest misses were among white voters and gender:
We had 49/48 Clinton among white voters compared to 42/57 in the exit polls. We had women at 59/36 versus 53/46 exit poll. We had men at 48/49 versus 44/54.
As HuffPo noted, other pollsters missed, in predicting how both how many 18-29 year olds would show up and what the Sanders margin would be among those voters:
That same NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll showed 18- to 29-year-olds making up 15 percent of the electorate, whereas the exit poll showed 20 percent of the electorate in that age group. In the pre-election poll, Sanders won the age group 74 percent to 25 percent; in the exit poll, his margin was bigger -- 81 percent to 18 percent.
The same pollster also missed on the percentage for college educated voters:
The NBC/WSJ/Marist poll had 38 percent college graduates in its sample, while the exit polls show 45 percent of the electorate was college graduates. Sanders does notably better among college graduates.
Harry Enten at FiveThirtyEight.com also noted that Sanders continued his pattern of winning independents:
One result that has stayed consistent on the Democratic side is that self-identified independents are far more likely to vote for Sanders. The current exit poll estimate is that he is winning them in Michigan by a 70 percent to 28 percent margin. Clinton, on the other hand, leads among self-identified Democrats by 57 percent to 41 percent. Although party registration doesn’t necessarily match identification, it gives you an idea that Sanders really benefits from open primaries.
Glenn Thrush at Politico noted what that may signal in upcoming states that resemble MI:
Sanders won roughly three-quarters of independent voters (who tend to be overwhelmingly white and working-class) on Tuesday.
Clinton has scored victories in open-primary states, but with the exception of her impressive Super Tuesday win in Massachusetts, they all came in the deep and upper South. And now comes a string of Michigan-like states with large, monochromatic independent voter bases – Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Indiana. Clinton has an edge in Illinois – with its highly engaged African-American population and connections to Obama – but her big leads in the polls in other three could turn out to be a Michigan mirage.
At IBT, David Sirota noted that Sanders won among those who see trade deals like NAFTA as a problem:
According to exit polls, 58 percent of those who voted in Michigan’s Democratic presidential primary said that trade with other countries takes away American jobs — and of those, 58 percent voted for Sanders.
Among others, both Sirota at IBT and Annie Karni at Politico noted that this could be a red flag for Democrats in the general election, given that Trump’s performance on this issue in the Rust Belt states is so strong:
More worrisome for Democrats was the unfolding scene of a pugnacious populist trouncing Clinton among white, working-class voters who feel left out amid an uneven economic recovery, a seeming red flag for Clinton, who could end up facing another candidate riding high in the Rust Belt -- Trump carried Michigan by winning 37 percent Tuesday -- after tapping into deep voter discontent.
Finally, as Nate Silver noted, the MI results may signal trouble for Clinton if she similarly underperforms in March 15 states. Because the states after that look really good for Bernie:
One reminder about the Democratic calendar: Although there are a lot of reasonably good Clinton states on March 15 — according to both polls and demographics — we then have a stretch of states that look quite strong for Sanders. These include Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Alaska, Washington, Hawaii, Wisconsin and Wyoming, all of which vote from March 22 to April 9.
So if Clinton underperforms her polls on March 15 in states such as Ohio as she did tonight in Michigan — and pollsters probably ought to be checking their turnout models carefully after tonight — she could have a really long few weeks ahead, even though Sanders’s delegate math remains highly challenging.
