Why Biden won Michigan's Democratic primary and Sanders lost

Joe Biden owes his Michigan primary win Tuesday to blacks, suburban voters, rural white voters and seniors — a coalition built up in the early primary states and now expected to propel him to the Democratic presidential nomination.

Despite his crush of campaign stops in recent days, Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders did worse in parts of Michigan where he easily outpaced rival Hillary Clinton in 2016 and needed to do well again in Michigan on Tuesday — such as Kent and Washtenaw counties.

Biden won all of the state’s 83 counties with all precincts reporting, with particularly strong turnout in affluent Oakland County, according to unofficial results. Overall, Biden won 53% of the vote to Sanders' 36% in Michigan.

A key to Biden's victory was that Democratic primary voters expressed greater confidence in the former vice president’s ability to defeat President Donald Trump in November.

Nearly 82% in an Associated Press survey of more than 2,400 Michigan primary voters said that Biden could unseat the president, compared with 63% who said Sanders could. 

Kent County was where Sanders scored his largest victory against Clinton in 2016 — a 25-point margin. But early Wednesday Biden held a slight lead of just over 1 percentage point, according to unofficial returns. 

In Washtenaw, home to the University of Michigan and where Sanders bested Clinton by 12 percentage points four years ago, he trailed Biden by nearly 3 points. 

Oakland County in the Detroit suburbs experienced a 44% increase in turnout Tuesday compared with 2016's Democratic primary. Democratic voters cast over 145,400 votes for Biden and 86,666 for Sanders, a margin of nearly 23 percentage points. 

By comparison, Clinton drew 92,300 votes in Oakland in 2016, and Sanders garnered just over 84,000 votes. 

Statewide, Biden carried women (58%), older voters (71%) and white voters without a college degree (55%), while Sanders won more voters younger than 30, according to the Associated Press survey. 

Perhaps the most striking story Tuesday night was the "shifting allegiance" of working-class white Democrats since 2016, said Dave Wasserman, an analyst at Cook Political Report. 

"Pretty much the entire Upper Peninsula voted for Sanders in '16" over Clinton, Wasserman said as an example.

But Yoopers gave Biden wide margins of victory Tuesday night. Wasserman offered two possible explanations. 

"First, many of Sanders' 2016 votes were more anti-Hillary Clinton than pro-Bernie Sanders," he said.

"Second, there's evidence many of the Sanders primary supporters who later defected to Trump in 2016 are still with Trump, and no longer Democratic primary voters."

One of Sanders' advantages when he upset Clinton in the 2016 Michigan primary was how deeply unpopular she was among white voters without a college degree, especially in rural areas, said Adrian Hemond, CEO of the Lansing-based Grassroots Midwest group.

"It was largely a matter of culture and the decades of attacks on the Clintons by the right. She was toxic to that constituency, and Joe Biden's not. Joe Biden got elected to the U.S. Senate a number of times by catering to that constituency," said Hemond, a Democratic consultant. 

This could be a significant factor come November for Biden if he's the nominee.

The former vice president doesn't need to win those voters but merely perform credibly among them in the general election, assuming Biden continues to do well with with black voters and suburban college-educated women, Hemond said.

"That starts making the map pretty hard for the president," he said. "That's a winning coalition in Michigan, and not just in Michigan but a bunch of other places, too."

Sanders' decision to hammer Biden for his decades-old votes for "bad" trade deals didn't resonate with voters this election cycle, said David Dulio, a political scientist at Oakland University. 

"That's either because that issue has fallen down the list, which I doubt, or the folks who are responsive to that are Trump voters," Dulio said. 

"It was risky for Sanders to come here and use that issue because he’s so similar to Trump's messaging on that," he added. 

The Republican president ran on a platform of replacing NAFTA and negotiated a new trade agreement with Mexico and Canada.

"If you rail against (trade deals) in Michigan now, well, what do you do about it? Nothing because the new USMCA is in place — by a bipartisan vote that handed Trump a significant victory," Dulio said.

"All the sudden, trade and NAFTA in particular is not an issue where Bernie Sanders has an advantage." 

Another weak constituency for Sanders has been African Americans. Biden led Sanders in Wayne and Genesee counties in unofficial returns by 19 percentage points and 26 points, respectively.

The Sanders campaign had made a concerted effort to improve in Wayne County, holding rallies this past week in Detroit and Dearborn, and Monday events in Romulus and Dearborn. Turnout in the county was up about 15% on Tuesday. 

"If you want to win the Democratic nomination for president, you have to have a plan to talk to black voters. If you don’t, you’re not going to win," Hemond said. 

Michelle Worthington, 50, of Warren voted with her daughter, Christa, 21, who cast a presidential ballot for the first time. They both supported Biden.

“Biden, I think, might be a good choice,” Worthington said. “He was with Obama, and I really liked his administration and I liked how he seemed to back him up on things. I’m not real political.”

Worthington said she was comfortable with Biden, but she thinks Trump deserves a break. She hasn't been "real unhappy" with the president. She may vote for Biden in the fall, but she’s keeping an open mind.

“A lot of it was because I feel like Biden just has a little bit more experience because he was with Obama,” Christa Worthington said of her vote for Biden over Sanders. “I feel like if he and Trump went head to head, that’d be pretty interesting.”

The trend of suburban women realigning toward the Democratic Party — first widely reported in the 2018 midterms — could help explain Biden's success in Detroit suburbs like Oakland County, where Biden was leading by nearly 23 percentage points in unofficial returns. Clinton's margin in Oakland in 2016 was under 5 points. 

"The flavor of Democrats they like is a lot more Joe Biden than Bernie Sanders, and the party needs to take notice of that," Hemond said. "The candidates of the far left are not to the taste of some of the new partners in the Democratic coalition." 

Former state Democratic Party Chair Brandon Dillon noted Sanders' oft-repeated promise to expand the electorate by bringing out legions of young voters.

"It didn’t happen tonight," Dillon said.

"The experiment is over. Time to shut it down," he said of Sanders. 

Frank Ritz, 23, of Warren cast his ballot Tuesday for Sanders, whom he also voted for in 2016, his first presidential election.

“I do find that Bernie’s sincerity and consistency is pretty big points in his favor. And I like the ideas of the Democratic socialist. It’s worked other places," Ritz said.

Biden, he said, is too middle of the road “between Bernie and Trump,” and that doesn’t work for him now.

“I don’t think Biden’s got a lot of people in mind when he’s speaking about policies and ideas,” Ritz said. “It’s definitely geared more toward a certain class of people.”

Lee Woelmer, 34, of Warren held his nose to vote for Biden because his top choice, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, had dropped out last week.

“It frustrates me since I’ve been 18, I’ve voted in every primary but it hasn’t mattered because by the time it gets to us, my choices have been taken away,” Woelmer said after he left his polling place.

“I wanted Warren because she’s got plans,” he added.

Biden, however, may not get his vote come the fall. "I don’t think I’d be able to support him in the general," he said. 

Woelmer said it will all depend on who Biden chooses as his running mate. “I don’t like his creepy Joe past and…he’s old.”

mburke@detroitnews.com

Staff Writers Leonard N. Fleming and Christine MacDonald contributed.