Bernie Sanders won Michigan in 2016. Tuesday’s primary looks much tougher.

Mr. Sanders has shaken up his schedule to hold three days of events and rallies in Michigan. He has intensified his attacks on Mr. Biden over trade, a major issue in the state; in remarks in Dearborn on Saturday, he recalled joining picket lines to protest “disastrous” trade deals. And his campaign arranged an event in Flint on Saturday night for the explicit purpose of Mr. Sanders making his case to black voters, who have largely favored Mr. Biden so far. The Flint event mostly drew white voters, though, and Mr. Sanders mostly reiterated his stump speech…

Advertisement

Mr. Biden, despite having a thin operation in Michigan, appears likely to do well with black Democrats and college-educated white voters, two groups that handed him decisive margins in Virginia, North Carolina and several other states on Super Tuesday. And the exit polling and voting trends in some of those states indicate that Mr. Sanders has declined in strength with working-class white voters, who, uneasy with Mrs. Clinton in 2016, delivered him landslide wins across much of central and northern Michigan that year…

[R]ecent election trends in Michigan are not encouraging for Mr. Sanders. In 2018, Michigan Democrats rallied behind a number of moderates — most notably Gretchen Whitmer in the governor’s race, and Haley Stevens and Elissa Slotkin in congressional races — and ended up winning Republican-held seats and loosening the G.O.P.’s grip on the state.

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Trending on HotAir Videos

Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement