Whomever you support in the primary, it’s difficult to deny that there is a correlation between turnout and results thus far. Where turnout has been better than 2008, Sanders wins. Where turnout has dropped less than 20%, Sanders usually wins. When turnout has dropped more than 20% Clinton always wins. This table shows the relationship between turnout and results thus far:



Note that both primaries and caucuses seem to hold true to this trend so far (with caucuses showing the highest relative turnouts). With that in mind, we move on to Michigan. The trick with Michigan though is that it’s demographically different than all of the states we’ve seen this far. It’s a mid-west post-industrial state with large rural areas contrasted with affluent areas and the big city in Detroit. We don’t really have a comparative framework to date so I am relying somewhat on the polls and the Massachusetts results for this projection.



But here is the gravy. so far turnout has directly predicted results everywhere except Massachusetts. However, if you weight the polls with turnout (which is how the polls are created in the first place so tricky) you can see that the polls had Massachusetts for Hillary the week before the election by a smaller margin than they do in Michigan, so it’s fair to assume that Bernie needs a very high turnout to win. Michigan also is quite new demographically so it’ll be interesting to see what patterns hold from other regions.

With that all done, we should be able to predict results based on turnout. So here is a county-by-county table of 2008 turnout for Michigan. If you support Hillary and turnout today isn’t meeting these levels, that is likely good for your candidate. If you are a Bernie supporter and turnout today is matching or exceeding these levels, this is likely very good for Bernie. So here is a tool for monitoring results.



I actually have this set up in a google doc which can be used to keep a live tally of turnout throughout the state but I have a soccer game to attend. If I find someone to manage it though I can leave it in good hands. Any volunteers?