2016Michigan Democratic presidential primary

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Candidate Bernie Sanders Hillary Clinton Home state Vermont New York Delegate count 67 63 Popular vote 598,943 581,775 Percentage 49.68% 48.26%

Results by county Congressional district results Sanders:     40–50%     50–60%     60–70% Clinton:     40–50%     50–60%     60–70%

The2016 Michigan Democratic presidential primary was held on March 8 in the U.S. state ofMichigan as one of theDemocratic Party's primaries ahead of the2016 presidential election.

On the same day, theDemocratic Party held a second primary inMississippi, while theRepublican Party held primaries in four states, including their own Michigan primary.Bernie Sanders' narrow win was a massive upset, with polling before the primary showing him trailing Hillary Clinton by an average of 21.4 points.^[1]

Clinton lost Michigan by a narrow margin of 0.23% in thegeneral election, against Republican nomineeDonald Trump.

On March 6, 2016 the Democratic Party held a seventh presidential debate atThe Whiting at theFlint Cultural Center.Flint, Michigan was chosen as the center of the ongoingFlint water crisis.^[2] The debate was hosted byAnderson Cooper and aired on CNN. Participants were Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. At the end of the debate, Cooper announced alabor union fund had committed $25 million in low-interest loans towards repairing the water system.

The next day, on March 7, 2016, a Town Hall event, was held as the eighth democratic forum. It started at 6:00 p.m. E.S.T., at theGem Theatre inDetroit, Michigan, and was aired by theFox News Channel.^[3] The forum was moderated byBret Baier.

Bernie Sanders's narrow, one-point win in Michigan was seen as a major upset for the Clinton campaign, since Sanders had never led a poll in that state. Many theories about the failure of the Michigan polling circulated throughout the media, with most centering on pollsters' erroneous assumptions about the composition of the electorate stemming from the2008 primary in Michigan not having been contested due to an impasse between thestate party andDNC.^[73][74][75] Although Clinton expanded her delegate lead with a lopsided victory inMississippi that same day, some journalists suggested Sanders' upset might presage her defeat in other delegate-rich MidwesternRust Belt states,^[76] such asMissouri,Ohio andIllinois, who voted a week later on March 15, along withNorth Carolina andFlorida, where Clinton was more clearly favored.^[77][78]

Sanders beat Clinton among white voters in Michigan, who made up 70% of the electorate, by a margin of 56–42, a margin perhaps larger than the Clinton campaign had anticipated.Independents, who made up 27% of the electorate, backed Sanders 71–28. As was true in other primaries, Clinton won the votes of women andAfrican Americans, but Sanders's margins withindependents andrural voters, mostlyworking classwhites who felt disaffected and disenfranchised bytrade deals championed by Hillary Clinton and her husband,^[23] were not able to be surpassed, even by Clinton's large leads in major cities such asDetroit andFlint. Among voters who said their primary concern was the U.S. economy, Sanders won 56–40, even though Clinton had hammered him on his 2009 vote against theauto-bailout which she believed would resonate in a state whose economy depended uponmanufacturing and theauto industry. Amongunions, Sanders had beaten Clinton 49–46, even though in previous contests union households had broken for Clinton.^[24] Hand-wringing began on the Clinton side, with the campaign worrying they turned their attention to the general election too soon, as Hillary Clinton had pleaded "the sooner I could become your nominee, the more I could begin to turn my attention to the Republicans."^[23]

Sanders thanked supporters after his surprise win, "What tonight means is that theBernie Sanders campaign, the people's revolution that we're talking about, the political revolution that we're talking about, is strong in every part of the country [...] And, frankly, we believe our strongest areas are yet to happen."^[23]

Clinton went on to win the next five states in the Democratic primary, including Ohio, Illinois and Missouri.

AlongsideWisconsin, Michigan was among the two"Blue Wall" states won byBernie Sanders in the primary election thatDonald Trump would ultimately flip in thegeneral election.

• 2016 United States Democratic presidential primaries by state
• 2016 Michigan elections
• Michigan Democratic primaries
• March 2016 in the United States

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