First, primary election turnout in Detroit is so low that results can be had if you can get your voters to show up. In the general election, other things will be on the ballot that the "takers" care about more.
The level of despair among voters shouldn't be discounted. Detroiters have been listening to the "change" mantra for 60 years, while things continued to deteriorate.
Among all the candidates, Duggan was the only one who was "for" anything. All the others were pretty much just "against Duggan" or "against the governor".
For some optimism, if second place man Benny Napolean had received ALL of the other candidates' votes, he would have had only about 1000 more than Duggan.
Mike is a talented manager, and for him to be effective his policies will have to look far more conservative than most Democrats would ever expect. If he doesn't turn it around, he's a failure. I don't think there's much to fear here.
I think any mayor should be little more than a financial manager anyway. Dave Bing had potential but was too old and didn’t have the fire in his belly for a fight.