The Obama campaign wants Michigan voters to vote Democratic ... just not tomorrow.
Interesting stuff in this article. It turns out, neither the Obama campaign nor the Michigan Democratic Party are encouraging Democrats to cast a Democratic ballot. In fact, they're actively discouraging it. Certainly, no delegates will be decided for Democrats—that will happen in a caucus later this May. And while Operation Hilarity may play a role,
there's another reason for Dems to stay away from voting Dem:
Michigan’s voter file has major lacunae when it comes to those variables for its 7.2 million registrants. The 870,000 people who chose to vote in the 2008 Republican primary, in which Romney defeated John McCain, offer a good base for profiling the characteristics of Republican general-election targets. But there’s little similar intel about who belongs to the other side: Michigan has not had a real Democratic presidential primary since 1992 [...]
Tomorrow’s turnout may help to fill in some of those blanks, but Democratic machinations—encouraging party loyalists to either stay home or disingenuously meddle in the Republican primary—mean that any new data about individual partisan loyalties that enters the voter file this month could roil more than it enlightens. “The data is perfectly meaningful statistically but it’s asymmetric,” says Mark Grebner, an East Lansing consultant who built the state’s first voter file and sells it to candidates from both parties. “If a person votes in the Democratic primary under these circumstances it’s strong evidence that they’re really a Democrat. But for anyone who votes in the Republican primary, the evidence about their party affiliation is fairly weak.”
Without party registration and other voter behavior data, elections such as this one help Michigan party strategists fine tune their GOTV and voter education efforts. Ideally, they get a solid idea of who is a strong GOP partisan and who isn't. That way, they don't spend money sending certain mail or directing GOTV calls to the non-partisans. But by suffering meddlesome voters, the GOP will have incomplete or incorrect data. Michigan Republicans could end up wasting money trying to GOTV Democratic voters, and make erroneous targeting decisions based on false data.
In other words, Democrats who vote Republican tomorrow don't just meddle with the GOP primary, but they also meddle with Republican electoral efforts into November, if not beyond.
So if you're a Democrat in Michigan squeamish about voting for Santorum, then vote for someone else! Either way, you're making Michigan GOP's job that much harder in the future.
And P.S.—the Obama campaign doesn't need these election results to find their supporters. They've got that nailed down already. So if you're a Michigan Democrat, expect the Obama campaign to find you for those May caucuses.