Haley Stevens

On Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, I had my eyes glued to the live results for the Michigan Democratic Senate primary on the Associated Press’ website. I stopped watching around the time that I was informed by another commenter that NBC News called it for Abdul El-Sayed, as I wanted to take an opportunity to breathe and then focus on writing my previous diary.

I just thought I would share my observations from the map above, as well as during that nail-biting four to five hours while the votes were being counted and reported.

In the map, the Associated Press used hot pink for the counties that El-Sayed won, and teal green for the ones Haley Stevens picked up. El-Sayed took 30 of the state’s 83 total counties, while Stevens got the remaining 53. That’s quite a difference between the two; when you do the math, Stevens won almost twice as many counties as El-Sayed. So, the question you may be asking is, how on earth did El-Sayed win despite the map being so green, and especially when Stevens took the state’s three most populous counties (Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb)? There is a rational explanation for it.

The darkest shades of pink and green are where El-Sayed and Stevens won by the largest percentage margins respectively. Let’s first consider the darkest green counties, particularly the ones in the Thumb Region as well as to the north and west of Saginaw Bay. Simply put, these are rural counties with low populations, so these were not going to help Stevens out whatsoever. On average, only about 2,000 to 3,000 votes were cast in each of these. Now, if we look at the darkest pink counties, particularly Kent County and Washtenaw County, these two are high population centers with the former being home to the city of Grand Rapids and the latter being the heart of Wolverine Country (the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor to those of you who are not college football fanatics). So, with Kent and Washtenaw, El-Sayed had a much bigger vote tally advantage than Stevens did with her “hot spots.” El-Sayed also had the edge when factoring in the counties of Ingham, Kalamazoo, and Ottawa (home to the cities of Lansing, Kalamazoo, and Holland respectively), and all three of these are also more densely populated areas with 250,000 or more residents. In these five counties, El-Sayed won by a margin of anywhere from 14.7 to 26.6 percentage points.

Now, let’s focus on Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb Counties, where Detroit and its suburbs are located. Stevens took these ones. However, as the vote counts were coming in for these three, El-Sayed continuously stayed right on Stevens’ heels start to finish, and came within just a few percentage points of her. I especially watched Wayne County closely. Early on in the count, things were looking pretty promising for Stevens there after that huge “vote dump”, which allowed her to open up with a 16 to 20-point lead over El-Sayed. Nevertheless, by the time half of the votes for Wayne County were tallied, El-Sayed was behind Stevens by only seven to eight points. Once 80% were counted, El-Sayed caught up yet again, and was trailing by four to five points. As of Thursday at 11:00 PM ET, he is behind by about six points with 99% of Wayne County reporting. So, while Stevens was able to make it to the finish line in Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb, El-Sayed was only a couple of seconds behind her in these races; El-Sayed’s horse just stumbled momentarily.

In summary, Stevens did not get a serious advantage in the Detroit metropolitan area, either.

After two-thirds of all votes across the state had been accounted for, El-Sayed was still in the lead by anywhere from 20,000 to 35,000. This did not change even after 90% of precincts were reporting. By that time, I was 99.8% sure that Stevens had no viable path forward.

In conclusion, you may be thinking to yourself, “El-Sayed won, so what’s the difference?” The reason is because it was a very interesting primary with very interesting results, and a lot of hairs were being pulled during the process, including mine. El-Sayed and Stevens both had one hell of a night, as did all of their supporters. This race truly could have went either way, and nobody knew for sure what the final outcome was going to be.

Alexa, play “December, 1963 (Oh, What A Night)” by Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons…