Old politics writers have long memories. Back in 1990, there was much less suspense about the governor’s election in Michigan than there’s been this year.
That was before term limits, and Governor James J. Blanchard, better known as Jim, was running for a third term against the Republican leader of the state senate.
Blanchard had been popular most of his time in office. He had won a second term four years before by a staggering landslide. The election was on November 6th, same as this year, and nationwide, indications were that it would be a good year for the Democrats.
The final polls came out that weekend, and Blanchard was ahead by 54 to 40 percent, a bigger margin than Gretchen Whitmer has today. So the election was, essentially over.
Except that it wasn’t. Turnout was exceptionally terrible, especially in Detroit, where Mayor Coleman Young had been feuding with Blanchard. Suddenly, on Election Day, the exit polls were saying the race had become dead even. At four the next morning, Blanchard looked at the figures with his top aide, and his face went white. He had lost.
John Engler would be the next governor of Michigan, and over the next dozen years would radically change this state. I am not saying that is going to happen this year. People are still not certain why that tremendous upset happened. When one embarrassed pollster took another survey after the 1990 election, his results still indicated Blanchard should have won.
On the same night, also running for reelection, Senator Carl Levin made short work of his challenger, a young congressman named Bill Schuette.
Polls are usually pretty accurate these days, but all they really measure is where the wind and the shifting sands are at a particular moment in time. Blanchard probably would have won in 1990, had the expected three million voters shown up, instead of barely two and a half million.
Rick Snyder won by a margin close to what had been forecast both times he ran. Gretchen Whitmer probably will win this year, if the final polls are close to being accurate.
But we just don’t know. Seventy years ago this very day, newspapers had the headlines set in type before the first votes were cast: Dewey Defeats Truman, the Chicago Tribune’s said.
The Democratic Party had split into three factions. President Harry Truman had no chance. On Election Night, Truman essentially ran away to face what was coming alone. Two Secret Service men drove him to a secluded bed and breakfast and checked him in under an assumed name. He had a sandwich, drank a glass of buttermilk and went to bed.
Few other political figures slept that night. At 4:30 in the morning, the Secret Service woke the President up and had him turn on the radio. Truman had won the biggest upset in the history of American politics, and it wasn’t even that close. That’s a pattern that has been repeated more times than pollsters care to admit.
But they will tell you that had a few hundred Florida Democrats voted back in 2000, or had one percent of those voting for Ralph Nader that year voted for Al Gore instead, this would be a different world, one in which we would never have invaded Iraq.
You’ve got four days to figure out your schedule for Tuesday. Whatever else you do, make time to vote.
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