You’ve probably heard of the $100,000 Pyramid on TV. But you’ve never heard of the 100,000 Vote Pyramid that Joe Biden and Donald Trump have to climb and failure to do so could cost them the White House.
Everybody in this town knew that the two candidates would win their respective primary efforts in the state last week, but what everybody did not know was that the two would each lose 100,000 critical voters along the way.
In president Biden’s case, the uncommitted 100,000 protest vote in the Arab-American and Muslin communities over his stance on the Gaza war cost him dearly as those voters sent him a message: Support a cease-fire yesterday Mr. President or else come November we may cease backing you.
Pollster Bernie Porn reports that the protest is about 13% of the Democratic vote and “it is not quite as bad as 16 or 17%.” However he quickly reflects, 74% of all Democrats want an end to the carnage and losing a big chunk of that number is quite another story and for Mr. Biden it does not end well.
Mr. Trump’s 100,000 headache was courtesy of one Nikki Haley. Hanging on for her dear political life, the really longshot GOP candidate, got a respectable 27% of the statewide GOP vote with some crossover help from Democrats. They were either trying to hurt Mr. Trump or test driving the Haley-mobile as an alternative to Mr. Biden. Either way she impressed some pundits by confi rming that Mr. Trump has mucho problems with collegeeducated, urban/suburban voters including women and moderate R’s who want to fire the former TV host. They rallied to her sinking ship keeping it afloat for the moment.
She scored 44% of the vote in Washtenaw County (home to that other school in A2). Mr. Trump got 45%.
She racked up 32% of the Grand Traverse County vote, 35% in Ingham and 33% in vote rich Oakland and an incredible 33% in the state’s most conservative bastion, Ottawa County down on the southern border.
“Those are counties that Trump will need to win in the General Election,” opines EPICMRA survey-guy Porn.
But he also points out that he is still winning battle ground states without those votes but remember those are primaries were his MAGA base provides the humph he needs but are there enough of them to get him through a November vote where Independents and others will decide the outcome.
As for Mr. Biden, Mr. Porn believes he has the bigger immediate challenge between the two candidates. Depending on where the Gaza war is at as the election approaches, Mr. Biden could be sitting pretty if there is peace, but if the killings continue, he could be toast.
Recall Mr. Trump got elected with an 11,000 vote win in Michigan over Hillary Clinton and Mr. Biden beat Mr. Trump here by about 150,000 votes so in another close election, which appears to be blowing in that direction, any loss of votes on either side could be more than problematic. It could spell c-ur- t-a-i-n-s for either one since lots of folks assume if you lose Michigan, you can’t win nationwide.
