Trump had another shaky night. But of course all media can talk about is Biden.

Trump lost 30% of the Michigan GOP, with Haley once again showing he's weak, while Biden won over 80% of Democrats.

Let’s make this perfectly clear: Joe Biden won the Michigan Democratic primary with over 80% of the vote, overperforming the polls, which had him under 80%.

Meanwhile, the other incumbent, Donald Trump, couldn’t crack 70%—coming in at 68.2%—as Nikki Haley is still showing his weaknesses (and 3% of Republicans voted “uncommitted”).

As in every contest so far, Trump underperformed the polling, this time by 15 points, which surely should have us questioning what the general election polls are claiming about his strength.

You will learn all of this in much of the media reporting today if you read through or listen carefully, but not in the headlines.

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In fairness, they didn’t do a terrible job this time around, with much of the coverage pointing to Trump’s weakness while keeping the Michigan protest vote in the Democratic primary in perspective. They’d argue that they gave more attention to Biden and the Democratic primary at the top because it’s the first time Biden faced any potential conflict.

That would be a good argument if indeed they’d not played down his resounding wins in previous contests—and hadn’t obsessed over his age for days and days and laid out plans for how he could be replaced—but that was not the case.

The group Listen to Michigan had organized in recent weeks, asking voters in the state, which has the highest proportion of Arab-American voters in the country, to vote “uncommitted” to send a message to Biden on Israel/Gaza policy. The leaders say they are not advocating voting against the president in November and electing Donald Trump—and urge people not to do so—but wanted to send a message in the primary.

It appears three out of four voters in Arab-American communities, particularly in the Dearborn area, where much of the community is centered, took up the call, as did many young voters statewide. That was impressive, but this is a small share of the overall electorate, and no one expects them all to vote against Biden in the fall. Obviously, in a close election, every vote matters. But even Nate Cohn, the polling analyst at the New York Times, who’s come under a lot of criticism for seeming to not recognize Democratic strengths, had to acknowledge:

These voters are a small share of the electorate, and it’s hard to see even a huge swing being decisive.

Imagine, for a moment, that in the last election, Mr. Biden had lost every single voter in Dearborn, Hamtramck and Dearborn Heights — the three Michigan townships where Arab Americans make up at least 30 percent of the population. He still would have won Michigan — and still would have won it by more than he did Wisconsin, Arizona or Georgia.

Last night, 13% of voters chose “uncommitted,” which is just two points above the 11% of those who went “uncommitted” in the 2012 primary when President Obama was running for re-election, and there wasn’t a loud, unified campaign calling for people to vote uncommitted that anyone can remember.

Still, organizers did a good PR job, which is what a protest is about. They brought national attention to the issue and to the brutality against civilians in Gaza, and they set expectations low. They said that if they got 10,000 people to vote uncommitted, it would be a win (since that was the number Trump won the state by in running against Hillary Clinton in 2016).

They actually got 10 times that last night, at 100,000. But turnout was high overall, and that still doesn’t come close to the 155,000 votes by which President Biden won Michigan against Trump in 2020. (And 2020 is the real comparison to make, not 2016.)

Nonetheless, the media jumped on the story last night, seeing it as organizers exceeding expectations, and, as we all know, our political reporters are really bad, always just looking for the shiny object.

So, the group played the media well and shined a light on an important cause, sending a critical message to Biden, even if the results don’t reveal an electoral problem at this time. Tom Bonier of TargetSmart, who studies early voting in particular and is one of the folks I turn to for analysis (because he’s always right about the over-playing of polls and is on-the-money when it comes to foreseeing results), weighed in on X.

Trump, meanwhile, saw 27% of voters go to Nikki Haley even when her candidacy seems dead, and he saw three percent vote “uncommitted.” For him, it is an electoral problem simply because he’s seen this happen in every contest so far. He’s the incumbent who has 30% or more of his party solidly against him in every contest, and the exit polling in South Carolina was dismal, as it was in earlier states. In every contest, 20% of those who voted in the GOP race say they won’t vote for Trump in the general election.

In the end, Biden won 81% of the vote, which is in the range to be expected of any incumbent when there are other, lesser-known candidates on the ballot pulling in single digits. Trump, the incumbent Republican—a man who was president before and is the leader of the GOP, bowed to by those in Republican leadership in Congress— so far, can only dream of that number. And Nicki Haley is staying in until at least Super Tuesday, and will continue to send a warning to the GOP about Trump’s very shaky candidacy.