We’re calling it a night. (Well, sort of: Harry will have more about Bernie Sanders’s shocking win in Michigan in a separate article later on.) In the meantime, here are my initial thoughts on why the polls in Michigan, which had Clinton ahead by 21 percentage points, got things so wrong.
I’ll also be posting some extended thoughts about Marco Rubio, who obviously had a terrible evening. In fact, Rubio may not net any delegates from any of Michigan, Mississippi and Idaho, having failed to hit delegate thresholds in all three states. It appears that some of this reflects tactical voting — there were a lot of late-deciders for Kasich — rather than a total collapse of Rubio’s image. So perhaps, just perhaps, he can hold out hope of that tactical voting working in his favor in his home state, Florida. But it’s an awfully long parlay — he’ll have to overcome very skeptical media coverage this week, then somehow win Florida despite already having been behind in polls, and then overcome a huge delegate deficit (or win at a contested convention) even if he wins his home state. Anyway, more on what’s going wrong for Rubio later.
For the other three Republicans, things were reasonably in line with expectations (or at least, FiveThirtyEight’s expectations). But note that things being in line with expectations is basically good news for Trump since he’s currently leading the nomination race.
Trump wound up with 37 percent of the vote in Michigan, a good sign with three big Midwestern states, Ohio, Illinois and Missouri, set to vote March 15. He ran especially strongly in southeastern Michigan, including in Macomb County, which was one famous for its “Reagan Democrats,” as well as in rural northern Michigan. There were still a few trouble signs — the exit poll showed Trump tying Cruz among women and losing to him in a hypothetical one-on-one matchup and (once again) faring mediocrely among late-deciders. But the results tonight take the notion that Trump was in some sort of free-fall largely off the table. He’s not invincible, but he won’t be easy to beat.
Trump also won Mississippi, getting 47 percent of the vote to 36 percent for Cruz. What’s the difference between Mississippi and Louisiana, which was closer? The difference may be that Mississippi was an open primary while Louisiana was a closed one, a factor to keep in mind going forward.
Cruz’s evening was reasonably good also, however, with two second-place finishes (very narrowly in Michigan ahead of Kasich) along with what looks like a fairly emphatic win in Idaho. He won’t lose many delegates to Trump — he’s down about 10 as I write this, with a chance to gain some back in Hawaii early this morning. Cruz had a reputation for being a regional candidate, but he now has won states in all four regions of the country: the Northeast (Maine), the Midwest (Iowa and Kansas), the South (Texas and Oklahoma) and the West (Idaho and Alaska). His chances look pretty good of emerging as the main challenger to Trump, much to the GOP establishment’s chagrin.
Kasich’s performance, on the surface, was somewhere between a par and a bogey. His final results in Michigan were in line with polling averages, although expectations were probably inflated in light of one poll that, in contradiction to the polling average, had Kasich winning Michigan. However, Kasich won’t pick up any delegates in Mississippi or Idaho. More to the point, he doesn’t really seem to have a plan to win the nomination without a contested convention and has admitted as much. Still, Kasich could possibly benefit from the fact that Rubio had an even worse night, especially given that Kasich seems more likely to win Ohio than Rubio is to win Florida.
(see updates...)