DETROIT – Until Michigan voted for Donald Trump four years ago, politicians were beginning to regard it less as a swing state and more as a safe Democratic one in Presidential elections.
Then came the stunning upset of four years ago –and suddenly Michigan, which hadn’t come close to supporting a Republican since 1988, gave Mr. Trump a tiny, 10,704 vote victory.
Two years later, however, Democrats swept every statewide office, and it appeared the state’s usual tendency was back.
So what did this week’s election say about Michigan? Is it once again the state that gave Al Gore, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama easy wins, or had it been dyed red by the Trump revolution?
The answer was both – and neither.
Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden won Michigan, after trailing in the count till mid-morning the next day. But his margin was far smaller than the 450,000 blowout President Obama scored against Michigan native Mitt Romney in 2012.
It was even less than the 165,000 plurality that John Kerry managed while losing nationally in 2004. With some ballots yet to be tallied, mainly in Democratic areas, Biden held a lead of 2,791,529 to 2,646,392 for President Trump, a lead of 145,137. That came after a wide variety of polls showed Biden ahead by anything from 7 to 12 points days before the election.
Clearly, the polls in Michigan were as wrong as they were nationally – even though President-elect Biden appears to have won a narrow victory in the state. Does that mean Michigan was back as a reliable brick in the “blue wall?”
Maybe, and maybe not.
The contours of the vote seemed to resemble the results in 2016 more than 2012, despite the state flipping back to the Democrats in the Presidential contest. For example: Monroe County, a mostly blue-collar county near the Toledo border. It voted twice for Barack Obama before giving Donald Trump a 61.8 percent landslide in 2016.
This year, Trump got an almost identical 61.5 percent in Monroe County. Why, then, did he lose the state?
What seems to have happened is that the turnout was larger, and Democrats did a better job getting their voters to cast absentee or mail ballots. Turnout was higher, which usually favors Democrats.
The Libertarian and Green Party candidates also got only a small fraction of the votes they won four years before; Bill Gelineau, the Libertarian nominee for governor in 2018, endorsed Joe Biden.
President Trump carried Michigan in 2016 by winning Macomb County, famous home of the Reagan Democrats, by 48,000 votes. This time, he won it again – but by less than 39,000. “Biden didn’t arouse the same hostility that Hillary Clinton did,” said reporter Chad Selweski, who has covered the county for decades.
In other races, Democrats did not make the gains they had hoped for. They had hoped to win a majority in the lower house of the state legislature – but Republicans kept the same 58-52 margin they had going in. More concerning was the U.S. Senate race, in which incumbent U.S. Sen. Gary Peters trailed John James, a GOP businessman for nearly a day before finally pulling ahead. Mark Grebner, a well-regarded pollster and owner of Practical Political Consulting, noted that most remaining votes were in Democratic areas, and predicted a Peters victory “by about 100,000 votes, something like that.” With nearly all the votes in Peters led by 84,000.
But Michigan Democrats, who haven’t lost a U.S. Senate race in the state since 1994, and haven’t had an incumbent beaten since 1952, were plainly unnerved by how close the race had been,
In races for the U.S. House of Representatives, each party began and ended with seven seats, though two freshmen Democratic members, Elissa Slotkin and Haley Stevens, each had a bit of a scare. Democrats made serious efforts to unseat longtime GOP congressmen Fred Upton and Tim Walberg, but didn’t come close.
Democrats did score one major accomplishment on Tuesday – they won a 4-3 majority on the Michigan Supreme Court for the first time in more than a decade. Chief Justice Bridget McCormack and newly elected Elizabeth Welch defeated their Republican challengers.
The bottom line: When all the new officeholders are sworn in, Michigan will still face the gridlock of a Democratic governor and a Republican legislature – and also something entirely new:
Next year, once the census figures are final, all Michigan legislative and congressional seats will be redistricted for the first time by an independent, multi-party citizens’ commission that may erase decades-old political fiefdoms. When the state has its next round of elections in 2022, it may be a very different world indeed.
-30-
(Editor’s Note: A version of this column also appeared in the Toledo Blade.)
