Michigan's Hidden Numbers

On Tuesday, almost all political attention was understandably put on who would win the Democratic primary in Michigan. And I watched that closely, too. But there were two other races in Michigan that I watched almost as closely that got very little attention. To be clear, I didn't watch them so much for much for who won, but another reason.

The races were the Democratic and MAGOP primaries for governor. And it was those two races in particular because it let me compare apples to apples. In the Senate primaries, the Democrats had a tight race of great interest in the state. The MAGOP Senate primary was a foregone conclusion, In the governor primaries, though, both parties had competitive races. And therefore, interest within the sate was fairly equal.

That's why it was important, because the numbers I was looking at was how many people voted in each race.

As readers here long-know, I've been yammering for a while about voter enthusiasm. That it's one thing for people to tell polls they approve of or support one candidate or another. But it's another for a poll to break down "strongly support," "moderately support," "support," "moderately disapprove" and strongly disapprove. Because it's the extremes, the "strongly," that are the people most certain to go out and vote -- most especially in a Mid-term Election, when turnout is historically low. Candidates need major "get out the vote" efforts to convince people in the middle to vote. But those on the extremes? Those are generally the people who say they'd crawl on glass to vote.

And this year, polls have shown that Democratic voters are overwhelmingly on the extremes compared to MAGOPs. Independents, too, who are polling very heavily Democratic for this Mid-Term. That's why we've begun seeing stories about MAGOP officials concerns about their party's voters not voting this November. Which brings us to that number in Michigan.

And while news analyst focus was on who won the Democratic Senate primary, my own attention, as I said, was in the equal Michigan governor primaries. And in that, the numbers broke down this way --

People who voted in the Democratic governor primary: 1,496,471

People who voted in the MAGOP governor primary: 930,890.

To call this a big difference is not being fair to big differences. That's results that are on a completely different level.

To be clear -- this is not a predictor of who will vote in the General Election. Primaries are different animals. Sometimes people in a party may not vote because they like both candidates on their side, and don't care who wins, so they do vote. Sometimes people don't vote in a primary because they don't like primaries, they aren't the "real" election. Sometimes, even, people don't even know there's a primary. Furthermore, someone in a primary, if a person's favorite candidate loses, they might be disappointed enough not not to vote. So, the people who vote in a General Election will be different from the vote in a primary.

But -- and it's a hugely important "but" -- it is an indication of who the enthusiastic voters are. And that's a critical base for a party since, not only do candidates not have to work as hard to ensure that they'll vote in the General Election, but those are (mostly...) votes the candidates can count on.

Yes, it's true, as I noted, a primary can split votes a bit if the race was bitter. But since these are the most motivated voters, they are the ones who -- for the most part -- feel strongest in their opposition to the other party.

So, yes, early polls do show that MAGOP Mike Rogers is ahead of Democrat Abdul El-Sayed. But those are general polls, not polls of how strongly voters support or disdain the other candidate, nor not only who says they are most likely to vote...but is most likely to vote. Especially those who have shown it.

I have no idea what will happen in the Michigan General Election for the U.S. Senate. I only know that if I was a candidate, I would much rather be on the side that is starting out with 1,496,471 people who voted in the primary, compared to the side that had 930,890 who voted.

MAGOPs can absolutely make up the ground. They'll likely have a lot more money to spend. Just know three things: 1) Having the most money is great, but if money counted as the most important things in elections, JEB! Bush would have been elected president. 2) The more money a party spends in one state, the less it has to spend in others. And 3) while MAGOPs can absolutely make up the ground...that's a lot of ground to make up.