spoiling the uncommitted
Taking a gander at the Michigan primary election results in the Democratic side and I can’t help but speculate on the nature of the “uncommitted vote”. First for comparison’s sake I look at the 2012 results.
Obama, Barack. 87.78%
Uncommitted. 12.22%
And not wholly completed but pretty close to a point we won’t see any movement for 2024.
Joseph R. Biden Jr. +81.1%
Uncommitted. 13.3%
Marianne Williamson. 3.0%
Dean Phillips. 2.7%
The 2012 uncommitted vote can probably be tacked over to the same disaffected arena as the 40 plus percentage points received by a mulletted prison inmate in West Virginia, and I am guessing if we look at a map of votes, there was more strength for uncommitted in rural Michigan than urban Michigan. I may be wrong — if I am, even better for my thesis in that the uncommitted vote gets spread out into anything and everything at all. This year, the similar total for “uncommitted” is concentrated in Dearborn and college towns, all based on mobilizing against Israel.
The question: did the appropriation of the “uncommitted” line into a single issue mobilization depress the “Uncommitted” vote turnout, away from a more generic discontent, state-wide? Say you are a mainline Democrat who simply thinks Biden is too old and either who the Hell is Dean Philips or why can he not say a damned negative thing about Trump, and Marianne Williamson is a nutcase self help guru who dropped out of the race anyway. But now you cannot vote for “Uncommitted” because tomorrow you will hear from pundits declaring a victory for those has passed who were tying up the streets chanting the asinine premise “From the River to the Sea!” You are stuck back at Biden or not voting. Like, couldn’t this single issue campaign have formed a new ballot line instead of hi-jacking this one?
The Republican voters did not have to worry about this factor. A Nikki Haley was a vote for everything and nothing – – statement of discontent for the status quo of Trump. So uncommitted received 3 percent of that vote. Add another 2 percent for the drop-outs — which I guess are their truer supporters than the candidates themselves, and we are still always from the Obama 2012 / Biden 2024 numbers.