Michigan has 7,180,778 registered voters (out of a 2000 Census population of 9,938,444), which makes this contest more than three times the size of Iowa. However, the Republican National Committee has penalized the state half its delegates in retaliation for violating party rules- they scheduled the primary before February 5, the earliest date allowed by the party. So, there are only 30 delegates at stake.
At the current time, the delegate counts excluding superdelegates (party officials and elected officials) are Romney 24, Huckabee 18 and McCain 10.
The population of Michigan is highly concentrated. The five Detroit area counties have 4.5 million people, 46% of the total, with 2.1 million in central Wayne County, 1.2 million in Oakland County, 790 000 in Macomb County, 320 000 in Washtenaw County, and 160 000 in Livingston County. Only 950 000 people live in the city of Detroit, down from a maximum of nearly 2 million in the 1950s. Detroit is the least white major city in the US, with the population of the city being 83% African-American and 5% Latino. The Detroit area leans Democratic, with Wayne and Washtenaw Counties being more heavily Democratic and Livingston County being heavily Republican.
Outlying major counties, in order of descending population, are Kent (570 000- seat is Grand Rapids), Genesee (440 000- seat is Flint), Ingham (280 000- contains Lansing), Kalamazoo (240 000), Ottawa (240 000- also in Grand Rapids area), and Saginaw (210 000). The outlying parts of the state tend Republican, with Democrats being favored in the eastern half of the state around Flint, Lansing, and Saginaw and in the sparsely populated north, and Republicans being favored in the western half around Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo. The population of the outlying part of the state lies almost entirely in the southern half of the lower peninsula, with the upper peninsula accounting for only 3% of the state total. Many media reports may talk about the "evangelical" population of the state, which is mostly in the western half, and much of which differs from other "evangelical" populations because of its membership in the Christian Reformed Church (CRC), a Calvinist denomination of Dutch origin.
(8:19) Michigan's delegates are allocated as follows (before the 50% penalty is assessed for having the primary too early, a process which could get ugly): 45 are selected for the winners of the 15 Congressional districts, 12 are in proportion to the statewide vote total, and 3 are party officials. Note that two of Michigan's congressional districts are mostly contained in the City of Detroit and have few Republicans, allowing someone to grab a few delegates with a small number of actual voters.
(8:28) The polls close at 9 (8 in the Wisconsin border counties on Central Time), but the New York Times mysteriously has a few votes in already. They report 234 Romney votes, 158 for McCain, 113 for Huckabee, 50 for Paul, 30 for Thompson, 10 for Giuliani, 10 for "uncommitted" and 1 for Duncan Hunter. You can see their totals, as well as the only county maps I've seen for live results, at this link.
(8:32) More in! Leelanau County in the northwestern lower peninsula is 38% in.
(8:41) Six counties are more than 25% in. Did I get the poll closing time wrong? Still rural areas. McCain leads in five of them.
(8:44) Make that nine. McCain leads seven of the nine. One county with a large town is in- in that one, Berrien County in the southwestern corner (36% in), McCain leads Romney by nine points. With 4% of the total in, Romney is reported up overall by three points. I wonder where the Romney votes are coming from?
(8:51): Romney 17,818 (35.8%), McCain 15,637 (31.4%), Huckabee 8,318 (16.7%), Paul 3,004 (6.0%), Thompson 2,171 (4.4%), Giuliani 1,328 (2.7%), Uncommitteed 1,299 (2.6%), Hunter 159, Tancredo 21 and "others" 17. 5% reporting. Eleven counties 25% in, mostly rural.
(8:55) Wacky totals in the NYT reports on the Democratic side. For instance, in Leelanau County, 46% Clinton, 10% Kucinich, and 4% uncommitted (953 votes, 69% in). What is this, a Gravel stronghold? Anyway, it doesn't matter because the Democrats got penalized ALL their delegates for the early primary, and Edwards and Obama withdrew from the primary in deference to party rules.
(9:01) Sixteen counties 25% in. Still no major ones. Romney opens up a 6 point lead in the totals. A few Detroit area results are in, although not near the 25% threshhold, and it looks like that's where the Romney votes are from.
(9:04) MSNBC has already called the primary for Romney. They claim only 11% in and it is 37% to 31% with Huckabee at 17%. on the NYT site, one major county is now over 25%, which is Ottawa County (Grand Rapids suburbs, Holland). Calhoun County, which contains Battle Creek, is slightly for McCain.
(9:14) In Ottawa County, Michigan's most "evangelical" major county, former home of Blackwater commander Erik Prince, Huckabee has only 22% of the vote with 36% reporting Romney leads McCain 34% to 32% There's no breakdown of the other 12%. I guess the Calvinists aren't that pro-Huckabee.
(9:20) 25% of the smallest Detroit area county is in- with 28% reporting it is Romney 44%, McCain 25%, Huckabee 15%. I am from Livingston County- it's a middle to upper-middle class area with outer suburbs developed since 1970. Many residents commute into Oakland County and Ann Arbor (Washtenaw County). It is heavily Republican but Bush in 2004 got 64% which is twenty points lower than what his father did there in 1988. The Huckabee number is lower than in other parts of the state- what you would expect there because of the low number of evangelicals and real rural people- the agricultural part of the county is only a few percent of the total population, which has increased to an estimated 180,000 from 58,967 in 1970.
(9:29) NYT calls for Romney. 24% of total in, 39% Romney, 30% McCain, 16% Huckabee, 6.3% Paul, 3.8% Thompson, 2.9% Giuliani, 2.0% uncommitted, and 0.5% for others. The Democrats are turning in a whopping 35% for uncommitted. Also, 25% of Macomb County is in, and it has Romney winning 44% to 25% McCain and 14% Huckabee. Macomb County is the third largest in the state (pop. 790,000) and contains a lot of working-class suburbs in the range from 8 to 14 Mile Roads adjacent to the city of Detroit.
(9:40) "Uncommitted" HAS DEFEATED Hillary Clinton in Emmet County, which is a small northern county with the town of Petoskey, home of Michigan's state rock- a fossilized coral known as the Petoskey Stone. With all precincts reporting, uncommitted defeats Hillary 49% to 45% with Kucinich at 5%. The votes cast were 3,232.
(9:50) Massive fluctuations exist in the uncommitteed fraction of the Democratic vote. It's only 5% in Jackson County (a midsize county), but the next county over, Calhoun, is 36% uncommitted. In fact, most counties seem to be reporting 20% to 40% uncommitted, but just a few are in the single digits. Otsego, Chippewa, and Houghton County don't even list it, with Dodd or Gravel third at around 1 or 2%, which would literally mean that uncommitted would have to get less than ten or twenty votes. This means the results are being withheld.
(9:57) HUGE, HUGE news! Emmet County has just unreported its results, now being listed with zero percent reporting! Petoskey must have gotten a call to stand down and re-report with those nasty "uncommitted" hooligans thrown out!
(9:59) HUGER NEWS! With 32% reporting, 9,034 votes, uncommitted leads in Washtenaw County of the Detroit metro area. Those Ann Arborites are pissed at Hillary, and they're not going to take it anymore! Lead is 46%-42%, and Kucinich is at 11%.
(10:06) Weird stuff on the NYT site with major counties in the Detroit area recording large Republican "uncommitted" totals- 23% in Oakland County with 71,513 votes in, for instance, which exceeds the entire vote total (9 684) for the state above. In fact, the page shows uncommitted leading both primaries in Washtenaw County. Odd.
(Copy of page)
Results
Democrats
| Candidate | Vote | % | Delegates | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hillary Rodham Clinton | 163,527 | 58.5% | To be determined | |
| Uncommitted | 101,126 | 36.2 | ||
| Dennis J. Kucinich | 11,505 | 4.1 | ||
| Christopher J. Dodd | 2,032 | 0.7 | ||
| Mike Gravel | 1,277 | 0.5 | ||
Republicans
| Candidate | Vote | % | Delegates | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mitt Romney | 193,244 | 39.1% | To be determined | |
| John McCain | 147,432 | 29.8 | ||
| Mike Huckabee | 79,374 | 16.0 | ||
| Ron Paul | 30,964 | 6.3 | ||
| Fred D. Thompson | 18,221 | 3.7 | ||
| Rudolph W. Giuliani | 13,816 | 2.8 | ||
| Uncommitted | 9,684 | 2.0 | ||
| Duncan Hunter | 1,604 | 0.3 | ||
| Tom Tancredo | 271 | 0.1 | ||
| Others | 228 | 0.0 | ||
(10:12) Romney seems to have lost most rural counties in the state. However, the site reporting looks garbled on the Republican side. I think this is an error at the NYT because there can't be that many "uncommitted" results on the Republican side, can there? 46% of 9,098 in Washtenaw (winning about 4200 votes), 45% of 70,434 in Wayne County (about 32,000), but 10,308 in the state total?
(10:16) Petoskey is back, with a new report with only 1,222 voting, but uncommitted Democrat still winning 49% to 45% with 5% for Kucinich. Chippewa County is reporting uncommitted Democrat results now, with 29% of 1,446 voting uncommitted, all precincts in in both cases. Emmet County has 31,437 people. Chippewa County has 38,543. In the Republican primary 2,983 voted in Chippewa County. The Emmet County republican numbers still aren't in. Houghton and Otsego county are still reporting no uncommitted and claiming 100% is in. This looks pretty weird. Houghton reports 894 D/2604 R votes, Otsego reports 675 D/2683 R votes.
(10:25) The NYT fixed the uncommitted problem on the Republican side. Dickinson County also reports zero Democrat uncommitted. They have 581 D/1627 R. So does Wexford, with 548 D/1213 R.
(10:30) If this is true, the D results are totally shocking! The Detroit News, a Gannett paper, says, "If 15 percent of the vote in a congressional district is uncommitted, its delegates will be free to represent any candidate." This threshhold is exceeded in basically every county in which the uncommitteed total is being reported. There is now 47% reporting in Washtenaw County, which has uncommitted leading Hillary 46% to 42% (11% Kucinich). With 64% in in Wayne County (with Detroit), 50% is for Clinton, 45% for uncommitted, and 4% is Kucinich.
(10:36) Michigan's 156 Democratic delegates are: 83 awarded to Congressional district winners (presumably all Hillary, except maybe some in Detroit area) and 45% will be statewide proportional to vote (running 38% uncommitted and 4.0% Kucinich) and 28 are "party leaders". But this info above suggests that the 83 delegates for Congressional district winners are "free to represent any candidate." Huh??
(10:46) CNN reports 70% African-American vote for "uncommitted" in D primary. 73% said they would vote for Obama if the vote were not totally screwy. Note that this has disenfranchised a lot of African-Americans in a major Democratic state. Way to go, Michigan Democratic Party! Way to encourage those black South Carolinians to vote for the Michigan Democratic Party's anointed candidate!
(11:20) A top news result right now on Google News, second below the top headline "Romney beats McCain in Michigan Vote" from the New York Times, is a video from "Russia Today" which discusses the Kucinich request of a recount in New Hampshire and the nasty situation in the Michigan Democratic primary. The video is on YouTube at this link. Russia Today is a subsidiary of Russia's state news agency RIA-Novosti. Interestingly, the other video on the Google news page right now is from al-Jazeera. I think the reason why is that those guys can't put video on most US cable systems, so the only way most people can ever see it is on YouTube.
(11:40) Most embarrassing statement by anybody- Jim Blanchard, governor of Michigan from 1983 to 1991, appointed ambassador to Canada by Bill Clinton, founder of the Democratic Leadership Council, and chairman of the Hillary Clinton campaign in the state, in the Detroit Free Press:
"Anything over 50%, we're ecstatic," Blanchard said. "A win is a win is a win, given what happened in Iowa and New Hampshire." Obama won Iowa; Clinton took New Hampshire.
"It's a big boost for Hillary in November. We're thrilled. Michigan has more delegates -- and I believe they will be seated at the convention -- than Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada put together."
(12:34) With 97% reporting, a stunning 40% voted uncommitted in the Democratic primary. 3.8% voted for Kucinich. If this was a normal country, I think this would invalidate the election results.Looking at the past blog, Leelanau County, which reported 4% uncommitted with 69% of the vote in (953 votes), is now reporting 42% uncommitted with 1315 total votes, with all precincts reporting. Otsego, Chippewa, and Dickinson Counties "found" their uncommitted votes, but Houghton and Wexford still have not. The early report of 5% in Jackson County has changed to 33% with all precincts in. And they say people who don't trust the voting systems are wacky conspiracy theorists. There were noticeable irregularites in six small northern counties and in Jackson County, which has a population of 160,000 and contains a major town, Jackson, about 75 miles west of Detroit on Interstate 94.
Most importantly, Washtenaw County has actually voted for nobody before they will vote for Hillary. With all precincts reporting, 46% voted uncommitted, 44% voted Clinton, and 9% voted Kucinich. Kucinich appeared in Ann Arbor yesterday before heading to Nevada to challenge his exclusion from the MSNBC debate before the Nevada Supreme Court. The Washtenaw unofficial result is out showing 28,559 votes cast, and 12,992 are uncommitted, 12,284 are for Hillary, 2455 are for Kucinich, 607 are write-in, 125 are for Dodd, and 96 are for Gravel. Emmet County, headuqartered in the small town of Petoskey, also reports a victory for uncommitted.
Jackson County, incidentally, now reports an "unofficial result" of 3559 Clinton (60.2%) and 1700 (28.8%) uncommitted. The NYT has 5665 votes, 100% in, with 63% Clinton and 33% uncommitted. This is about 170 more uncommitted votes than the unofficial result, with the Clinton number dead on. Using the percentages in the "unofficial result" the total votes were about 5,911.
(1:19) The Wayne County "unofficial results" are seriously different from the New York Times. NYT has 163,919 votes, all precincts in, with 50% Clinton and 46% uncommitted. The "unofficial results" have 45,514 for Hillary, 26,082 for uncommitted, 3356 for Kucinich, 1338 write-ins, 523 Dodd and 289 Gravel. This is a total of only 77,102 votes. This must be a partial total and the final results aren't out yet. But isn't it odd that the part listed here has only 34% uncommitted? I guess it's possible if the part they have in first is in white areas.
(1:26) The Detroit news claims all precincts in for Democrats. They have 328,151 for Hillary (55%), 236,723 for uncommitted (40%), 21,708 for Kucinich, 3853 for Dodd, and 2363 for Gravel.
(1:33) Blanchard has referred to a "stealth campaign" for uncommitted. What a jerk.
(1:38) Apparently today, former US senator Don Riegle gave a blistering speech in Detroit today saying:
“What happened in Michigan is not very different from what used to happen in the old Soviet Union,” Riegle said. “The Clinton machine manipulated the ballot. They don’t care how they win, only that they do. It’s wrong and people need to know that.”
(1:49) CNN projects 12 delegates for Romney and 9 for McCain. They have raw county votes with a less convenient interface, and they show exactly zero uncommitted votes in Houghton and Wexford counties. The correct results would add maybe a thousand votes to the total, ablut half a point, but the absence of them is quite disturbing. They also have the numbers in Emmet County- 598 uncommitted, 550 Clinton, and 59 Kucinich, 11 Gravel and 4 Dodd.
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