According to NBC (and most news outlets) Hillary Clinton won the Flint, Michigan debate preceding the Democratic primary decisively, ensuring she’d beat Sanders in the primary.
All the polls, up to the primary, had Clinton double-digits ahead.
538 blog said that Clinton had a 99% chance of winning that primary.
Nate Silver — the famed election predictor ever since he accurately predicted the results of the 2012 election, down to most precincts — said that if Sanders won the Michigan election, it would be among the biggest upset in primary history.
Hillary was expected to win Michigan by around 20 points.
And instead she lost.
To Bernie Sanders.
And for awhile, Nate Silver’s blog was confused. Yeah, there was the theory that some Democrats who would have voted for Clinton decided to go Republican and vote for Trump (as they assumed Clinton would win), but that only explains, by the best data available, around 7% of the Democratic vote. And it’s around number six on their list of possible reasons that Sanders won.
The others? Basically, more people voted than they anticipated.
First reason? “Pollsters underestimated youth turnout.”
Second reason? “Pollsters underestimated Sanders’s dominance among young voters.”
Third reason? “Pollsters underestimated the number of independent voters who would participate in the primary.”
Fourth reason? “Pollsters underestimated Sanders’s support among black voters.”
People voted.
When Sanders talks about the importance of millions of people standing up, this is what he meant. When he said that they can change outcomes, this is what he meant. If millions of people stand up and say “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH,” we will change the complacency in American policy and there will be change.
But you have to do it. You have to go out there and vote. And vote anyway, even if all the pundits are saying that Clinton’s gonna win an election by twenty points, or that Sanders has no chance. Contribute. Vote. Campaign. And we can turn the world upside down and actually change this country, in unprecedented ways, for the better.
Remember Michigan, where hundreds of thousands of people said “not today” and went to polling places, waiting for an hour or more, to change the future of this country and make it something they could believe in. They said the young wouldn’t come, and they came in such force that the ballots could not keep up — and still they waited for more ballots to come, so they could change the future of this country. These were not people who were just going to be told that their vote didn’t matter, that they could not change things, that change was a pie in the sky dream.
And I’ll tell you — it’s not looking good. Almost everyone says Hillary Clinton is going to win this primary. And she will — unless millions of people stand up, past any jeers and doubters and naysayers, and cast their ballot for the good of this country.
I know it can be hard. But when you’re juggling multiple minimum-wage jobs, or when you’re tired after a long day at the office, or when you see the long lines — whatever you have to sacrifice — remember Michigan. Remember that unless you, and hundreds of thousands of others, stand up, Sanders will never be President of the United States. Don’t let a pundit tell you to stay home. Remember Michigan.
Go to the polls.
And this is not just abstract talk. This is real. These are the statistics by the very same pundits who said you didn’t have a chance in hell because they thought you would not vote. They still think that.
It’s infuriating that they would insult us like that, that they think we would care so little about this country and our future.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
It’s time for millions of people to stand up.
Vote.