Michigan is the most Democratic of the key swing states. Former President Donald Trump can win it, however, if he can do what many national polls suggest he can: get up to 20% of the black vote.
Democrats win in Michigan because they dominate the urban vote. Just ask President Biden, who carried the state by nearly 3% in 2020 despite winning only 11 of its 83 counties. Those were the ones with Michigan’s large cities: Detroit, Grand Rapids, Lansing, Ann Arbor, Flint. These cities and their neighboring suburbs accounted for all his edge and then some.
Biden won them with massive margins, too: Ann Arbor voted 87-11 for Biden; Grand Rapids went 70-28. Detroit topped the list with a 94-5 Biden margin, but places like Southfield (87-12) and Flint (82-16) weren’t far behind.
These Democratic super-cities all share two characteristics: They are dominated either by college-educated whites in the state capital or large university towns (Lansing, Ann Arbor, East Lansing), or they have high populations of blacks and Latinos. Cut the margins among one or more of these groups, then, and Trump has a path to victory.
He won’t do that with bureaucrats or university elites. America’s government managers and large educational institutions are the bastions of the so-called Resistance. Vice President Kamala Harris is the perfect candidate for Zoe from Ann Arbor, and Trump shouldn’t waste his time trying to change their minds.
Black and Latino voters, however, have been shifting away from Democrats. Exit polls showed Biden beat Trump 92-7 with Michigan black voters, but the most recent New York Times-Siena poll showed Harris winning that demo by only 80-14.
That may not seem like a big difference, but blacks were 12% of the total electorate in 2020 per the exit poll. If Harris wins them by 20 points fewer than Biden, that alone would cut 2.4% off Biden’s 2.8% statewide margin, reducing Harris’ expected lead to a mere 0.4%.
Cutting her lead with Latinos and other nonwhite voters would do even more damage. They cast a combined 8% of the vote, with Latinos going 55-44 for Biden and other races backing him 66-30 — roughly 61-36 combined.
The NYT/Siena poll had Harris winning by only 50-43 among Latinos and other nonwhites. Decreasing the Democrats’ margin with other nonwhites from 25 to 7 points would, along with the drop in black support, flip the state to Trump if his share of the white vote stays constant.
Some of that decline may be due to the state’s Arab population. Hard numbers are difficult to come by, but it appears there are between 300,000 and 400,000 Arab and other Middle Eastern residents in Michigan. Many are not citizens, and they are not a large enough demographic to flip the state to Trump on their own. But they are numerous enough to contribute to a Trump victory if they abandon Harris over the administration’s policy towards Gaza.
Harris will surely try to regain support among these traditionally Democratic groups, but she also hopes to expand the growing Democratic support in educated suburbs too. The NYT/Siena poll shows her ahead by 55-40 among whites with a college degree compared with Biden’s 53-46 margin.
College-educated whites cast 29% of the state’s votes in 2020; expanding the Democratic lead with this demographic by 8 points roughly offsets the polling decline among blacks. That will give Harris the win if she maintains that level of support.
Trump will win most places in the state because of his massive backing from its white working-class voters. Michigan is still home to a large population of whites without a college degree, and they abandoned their long-standing Democratic heritage to back Trump in 2016 and 2020.
Gogebic County on the state’s remote Upper Peninsula best exemplifies this trend. It had not backed a Republican for president since 1972, when Richard Nixon swept to a historic landslide. Yet it gave Trump 54% in 2016 and 56% in 2020, creating a 20-point shift in the margin from Obama’s 8-point win there in 2012.
Trump’s problem is that non-college whites are a shrinking share of the Wolverine State’s electorate. They cast 52% of the vote in 2020 but were only 50% of the sample in the recent NYT/Siena poll.
Whites without a college degree are much older than other demographics, and merely the passage of time is reducing their political power.
Michigan will be a reach for Trump, but it is a must-win state for Harris. Expect her to try to nail it down as early as she can.
If she’s still spending lots of time here in October, it’s a sign her campaign is faltering.
Henry Olsen, a political analyst and commentator, is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
