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Michigan Presidential Primary: The Math, updated

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Violet
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by: alanfox

Tue Jan 22, 2008 at 12:51:44 PM EST

! – promoted by Eric B.)

     The Elections Division continues to update the presidential primary returns to reflect official numbers as they are reported by the counties.  Most significantly, the Division has fixed an error that inflated the vote totals — Democratic and Republican — in the Congressional District part of the returns in Wayne County.

     The most significant changes are that it now turns out that Uncommited defeated Clinton in CD 13 as well as in CD 14.  In CD 13, the margin was 23,454 to 22,362.  In CD 14, which was originally reported with a 1500-vote margin the Uncommitted margin is now up to about 5000 votes — 31,738 to 26,769.  The other districts that have parts of Wayne County show smaller changes.

     None of this appears to affect the delegate counts at all.  CD 13 will elect six delegates so the effect of moving from a slight Clinton win to a slight Uncommitted win remains three delagates for each.  Uncommitted already had a 4-3 delegate advantage in CD 14 and the larger margin is not large enough to switch that margin to 5-2.  The smaller changes in CD 15 leave the delegate distribution there at 3-3, with Clinton still narrowly missing a fourth delegate.

Comments

14 responses to “Michigan Presidential Primary: The Math, updated”

  1. Violet Avatar
    Violet

    The actual illumination
    will come from precinct level data. CDs are too broad to determine what happened.
    Even county data would be better, but than you miss Wayne County’s Detroit-Burb divide doing that.

    by: Nazgul35 @ Tue Jan 22, 2008 at 12:39:40 PM CST

    Reply
    1. Violet Avatar
      Violet

      Well, you’re right in one regard
      The precicint level surely is the place to learn esactly “what happened” but it is at the CD level that the delegates are determined.
      Julie

      To prepare for when your life flashes before your eyes, make sure it’s fun to watch.

      by: JNelson @ Tue Jan 22, 2008 at 13:58:10 PM CST

      Reply
      1. Violet Avatar
        Violet

        I just hand-entered all the precinct data from Kalamazoo County
        for the primary.
        Kalamazoo County is a pretty good proxy for the state as a whole. It has a rural-urban mix about like the whole state. Here are some stats:

        Michigan Kalamazoo
        per capita income $22168 $21739
        % black 14% 10%
        % Hispanic 4% 3%
        below poverty 12.5% 13.8%
        pop change 2000-2006 1.6% 0.9%

        There may be a very few other counties which are like Kalamazoo in this regard, perhaps Berrien. I have not looked at this in detail. But most counties are either 95% white and rural, or higher than average in minority population and dominantly urban.

        So looking at what happened in Kalamazoo will probably give a fair snapshot of what happened in Michigan as a whole.

        1) There is no precinct-level correlation between the percentage of voters who chose a Democratic ballot, and the percentage who voted Uncommitted.

        2) There is a small correlation between the previous Democratic performance of a precinct and its Uncommitted percentage. Looking at this more closely, this correlation is almost entirely due to a handful of the highest Dem performing precincts which had a high Uncommitted percentage. These precincts are dominantly African-American. Therefore, my hypothesis is that these are mostly Obama voters, and that the last-minute publicity given to “Vote Uncommitted for Obama” was successful. If you remove these six precincts, there is no residual correlation for the remaining 109 precincts.

        3) 3.76% of Democratic voters wrote-in a name. But this was quite different between in-person and absentee voters. For instance, in the city of Portage, only 1.7% of in-person voters wrote-in, while 9.4% of absentees did. The early voters missed out on the extensive “Write-ins don’t count” message in the last days before the election.

        by: memiller @ Wed Jan 23, 2008 at 11:03:19 AM CST

        Reply
  2. Violet Avatar
    Violet

    Does your County
    Contain two university towns like Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti…because those two towns drove why Clinton lost to Uncommitted.
    by: Nazgul35 @ Wed Jan 23, 2008 at 16:46:13 PM CST

    Reply
  3. Violet Avatar
    Violet

    Kalamazoo has a higher % college graduates
    than Michigan (31.2% vs 21.8%) due to WMU, Pfizer, and to a lesser extent Kalamazoo College. It is interesting that in spite of that, it has a lower per capita income than Michigan as a whole.
    Also, the Uncommitted vote was 40.1%, a close match to the state as a whole.

    by: memiller @ Wed Jan 23, 2008 at 17:12:11 PM CST

    Reply
    1. Violet Avatar
      Violet

      Also
      Emmet County was predominately Republican.
      Clearly, there was several things going on at the same time.

      by: Nazgul35 @ Wed Jan 23, 2008 at 16:48:14 PM CST

      Reply
  4. Violet Avatar
    Violet

    Emmet County
    Emmet County was a case of Republican crossovers. Kalamazoo County, like Washtenaw County, was following the same socio-economic divide we’ve seen between the candidates in other states combined with the fact that educated Dem voters were better informed about the Uncommitted vote.
    by: northernlib @ Wed Jan 23, 2008 at 17:24:26 PM CST

    Reply
    1. Violet Avatar
      Violet

      Isn’t Emmet usually Republican?
      It went for DeVos…
      not sure what your point is, could you expand?

      by: memiller @ Wed Jan 23, 2008 at 18:04:53 PM CST

      Reply
      1. Violet Avatar
        Violet

        Emmet
        I believe what Nazgul was saying is that Emmet was a case of Republican crossovers voting Uncommitted rather than Obama supporters voting Uncommitted as was the case in Washtenaw or Kalamazoo counties. Yes, Emmet is a strong Republican county although the Democrats in northwest lower Michigan are doing a fine job making progress there.
        by: northernlib @ Wed Jan 23, 2008 at 18:39:28 PM CST

        Reply
        1. Violet Avatar
          Violet

          OK,
          although, since as I said Kalamazoo almost exactly matched the statewide average for Uncommitted, there is nothing to explain, there. I previously was exploring the trend WITHIN Kalamazoo, rather than explaining a (nonexistent) difference BETWEEN Kalamazoo and the rest of Michigan.
          Also, it seems, ummm, rather odd that Republicans would cross over to vote Uncommitted in our primary. It was hard enough getting the Uncommitted message across to OUR voters. Usually cross-overs are either mischief-makers, as R voters for Jesse Jackson back in the day, or voting for what they actually believe to be the best candidate, as with D voters for McCain in 2000. Making mischief by voting Uncommitted just seems like a stretch, although I suppose it is possible.

          by: memiller @ Wed Jan 23, 2008 at 20:56:15 PM CST

          Reply
          1. Violet Avatar
            Violet

            It’s possible
            That the sample of actual Democrats was small enough and educated enough and socially elite enough in Petoskey and Harbor Springs to explain why Uncommitted won without any crossover Republican votes or was aided by it. But it does not fit with true Democratic voters in other northern Michigan areas.
            by: northernlib @ Wed Jan 23, 2008 at 21:29:00 PM CST

          2. Violet Avatar
            Violet

            All the more reason
            you should look at all the precincts in Michigan, rather than suffer an ecological fallacy by trying to extrapolate Kalamazoo to all of Michigan.
            But it is a good first cut…as always, more data is needed.

            by: Nazgul35 @ Thu Jan 24, 2008 at 11:58:47 AM CST

          3. Violet Avatar
            Violet

            *I* should look at all the precincts in Michigan? :>
            You are the one who first mentioned precinct data – well, I provided some insights gleaned from precinct data, and will gladly send those data to anyone who asks.
            Anyhow, since no one is paying me to analyze Michigan, I will stick to tending my own garden. (Actually, no one is paying me to analyze Kalamazoo, either, but it is my chosen field of endeavor).

            by: memiller @ Fri Jan 25, 2008 at 08:51:44 AM CST

  5. Violet Avatar
    Violet

    strange trend i’ve been seeing
    obama seems to do better in rural areas than in the cities (see nh and nv results).
    by: Jon Koller @ Fri Jan 25, 2008 at 19:32:26 PM CST

    Reply

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