Mitt Romney Wins Michigan Primary, GOP Must Go Back to the Drawing Board

Posted by Chris Bowers, Open Left at 12:16 PM on January 15, 2008.

Romney 39%, McPain 30%. Huckabee 16%

Clinton 56% Uncommitted (Edwards and Obama weren't on the ballot) 39%

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UPDATE: Romney has it. I was looking over the country results, and while McCain is winning most of the smaller counties. Romney is building huge leads in the larger counties like Macomb, Oakland, Kent and Livingston. He is already ahead 37%-31% with 9% reporting, and I don't see any way Romney loses this now.

UPDATE II: Mitt Romney has won Michigan, as called by all news outlets. Way to go, Mitt! A McCain win would have virtually sealed the nomination for him. Now, denying McCain the nomination is up to Romney in Nevada, and Huckabee in South Carolina. The latter is particularly important.

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Obama Wins Black Vote in Michigan Without Even Competing There

This is remarkable:

According to the Fox exit polls, in the Democratic primary tonight, Clinton took 25% of the African-American vote and "uncommitted" is getting 69% of the African-American vote. Now remember, Hillary is only major candidate on the ballot.

If he can trounce Clinton among African-Americans without even being on the ballot, it seems that Obama has solidified African-Americans behind him nationwide. If, as Matt suggested yesterday, he can secure the white liberal vote, that would be a winning coalition in the Democratic primary nationwide. It would also be a repetition of his coalition in the Illinois Senate primary four years ago.

Liberals and Latinos are now the swing voters that will determine the Democratic

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Most polls close in a few minutes, at 8pm eastern. Here is something from the exit poll that almost certainly confirms a Romney victory:

Michigan has open primaries and no registration by party, so voters choose on primary day which partisan contest to vote in. In 2000 with no Democratic race but for an eventual blowout in caucuses three weeks later, many Democrats voted in the Republican primary -- totaling 17 percent of that electorate, more than in any other GOP primary exit poll since at least 1992.

On Tuesday there were both Democratic and Republican primaries and though ballot maneuvering left the Democratic side in essence non-competitive, apparently it kept some Democrats from migrating to the Republican contest -- where they made up fewer than one in 10 voters. In 2000, Republicans made up only 48 percent of the GOP primary electorate; Tuesday they were two-thirds of it. A quarter of Republican primary voters Tuesday called themselves independent, down from 35 percent eight years ago.

With Republicans making up two-thirds of the electorate, and with largely momentum proof absentee votes making up nearly half of the electorate, a Romney victory seems almost guaranteed. Also, Drudge claims the exit polls show Romney 34%, McCain 29%, and Huckabee 16%. We won't know if that is true for certain until the exit polls are posted at 9pm. Still, it sure looks like Romney won Michigan.

I'll be watching CNN, Detroit News, and Detroit Free Press for returns. I do not plan to regularly update results unless it looks like Romney isn't headed to a victory. Feverish, minute by minute updates will be saved for Democratic caucuses and primaries.

If there is a media narrative that progressive bloggers, led by Daily Kos, won Michigan for Romney, it will be the dumbest media narrative about bloggers since Jonathan Singer managed to convince a reporter that everyone writing on MyDD was Jerome Armstrong. Exit polls will undoubtedly confirm that McCain won self-identified Democrats who voted in the primary. If this is even mentioned, it will be only out of the ongoing established media desire to pin everything negative that happens in politics on bloggers, the grassroots and other ideological, partisan types.

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While New Hampshire justifiably gave us pause about the usefulness of polls as predictors of final results, keep in mind that the final New Hampshire polls were accurate on the Republican side. Now, the final polls out of Michigan suggest a late swing toward Romney:

Mitchell Research today (yesterday in parenthesis) Romney: 35% (29%)

McCain: 29% (27%)

Zogby Today (yesterday in parenthesis) McCain: 27% (27%)

Romney: 26% (24%)

ARG today (Friday numbers in parenthesis) McCain: 31% (34%)

Romney: 30% (27%)

Michigan Polling Average Today (Sunday in parenthesis) Romney: 29.0% (26.2%)

McCain: 26.3% (25.3%)

All of the movement now favors Romney. A very close election is still expected, but right now it looks as though Romney will nip McCain at the wire. Not a moment too soon, either, since McCain had pulled ahead in South Carolina, Nevada and California, since he had tied Giuliani in Florida, and since he has taken double-digit lead nationally (source).

A Michigan win could allow everything to fall into place for McCain, and he might just sweep to the nomination more or less unscathed. A Romney win in Michigan halts McCain's momentum, and once again busts the Republican nomination wide open. South Carolina and Florida need to follow through, but defeating McCain in Michigan is a necessary first step to denying him the nomination. And, from my vantage point, denying McCain the nomination means denying Republicans another term in the White House.

Tagged as: republican party, mccain, michigan, romney

Chris Bowers was a full-time editor at MyDD from May 2004 until June 2007. Some of his projects have included the creation of the Liberal Blog Advertising Network, the first scientifically random poll of progressive netroots activists, the Use It Or Lose It campaign, the nation's most accurate forecast of Democratic house pickups in 2006, and the 2006 Googlebomb the Elections campaign.