Election 2024: How Many Voters Can Biden and Trump Afford to Lose?

Going by NBC News's figures as of the time I write this, Joe Biden won yesterday's Michigan Democratic presidential primary with only 81% of votes cast. 13.2% of primary voters chose "uncommitted," while 5.8% chose Marianne Williams, Dean Phillips, or write-in candidates.

Per the same figures, Donald Trump won the GOP primary with only 68.1% of the vote to Nikki Haley's 26.5% and 13.4% for "uncommitted" and all other candidates.

If significant numbers of either candidate's party's voters stay home, vote third party or independent, or worst of all (mathematically, that is) go for the other party's nominee come November, that candidate's in a hurt locker.

Both of them are, or at least should be, in "stop the bleeding" mode.

I suspect the Democrats are in better position to put pressure on the wounds than the Republicans are, even if they're not willing to do the obvious thing and talk Biden down off the nomination ledge and replace him with a "lighter baggage" candidate, for two reasons:

• Since Biden is actually president, he can do things instead of just talking shit about doing things. He could push forward with the de-scheduling of cannabis. He could find a way to show enough backbone against Netanyahu to get pro-Palestine Democrats back on his side but not so much that pro-Israel Democrats run for the exits. That kind of thing.
• On the Republican side, the "action" variable is with Congress, where it's always a "herding cats" proposition at best, and where at present it's a "keep the shit-talking presidential candidate's base happy and hope for the best" thing, and virtually guaranteed to not bring any voters who aren't still with them back to them.

But, I could be wrong.