How Republicans won Michigan, how they lost it, and what it all tells us.
Subscribe and turn on notifications ? so you don't miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjO
The “blue wall” once referred to a group of Northeast, Midwest, and West Coast states that, conventional wisdom said, “always vote for Democrats.” Unfortunately for Democrats, that was wrong, and in 2016 Donald Trump shockingly won three “blue wall” states — including, narrowly, the state of Michigan.
It maybe shouldn’t have been such a shock, though. All three of the “blue” states Trump won actually had a history of electing Republicans at the state level. Michigan in particular had been fully taken over since 2010 by Republicans, who then spent years gutting unions, restricting abortion, loosening environmental protections, and generally just turning a Republican policy wish list into law. So Trump winning Michigan was, in a way, just the culmination of a years-long drift to the right there.
But by 2022, something had changed dramatically. In a midterm election where Republicans were favored, Democrats won every branch of elected government in Michigan — governor, state House, and state Senate. The state Senate in particular had not been under Democratic control since 1984. And Democrats got busy using their new power immediately: repealing much of the right-wing legislation of the previous years, passing strong LGBTQ protections, quadrupling a tax credit for the poor, and allocating a billion dollars for the auto industry to transition to electric cars. Suddenly Michigan was cranking out more progressive legislation than almost any other state in the US.
So to recap: Michigan was once a blue state, except it wasn’t actually, and in fact over time it got pretty red, but then it became an actual blue state. (Again?) Or something like that. Obviously, the truth is that Michigan is a swing state. But the story of each of those swings is actually key to understanding how US politics work in the 2010s and 2020s. And it can tell us a lot about our next election, too.
Chapters:
0:00 The blue wall
2:42 Maps
4:52 The bellwether
9:51 Exit polls
13:08 2022
15:43 Michigan and the US
Sources:
For Michigan election data we drew from two useful websites from the Michigan Department of State. First, they have election results down to the county level going back to the late 90s: https://www.michigan.gov/sos/elections/election-results-and-data
They also have a tool that produces election results down to the city/township level: https://miboecfr.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/cfr/precinct_srch.cgi
To show national and statewide exit polls over time, we used NBC News’s data — they’re among the only organizations whose granular exit poll results both nationally and statewide going back a decade are still publicly available.
Here are links to their Michigan exit polls from 2012-2022:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2012-election/michigan/president/index.html#exitPoll
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/2014/mi/governor/exitpoll/
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/mi/
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2018-election/midterms/mi/
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-elections/michigan-president-results/
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2022-elections/michigan-governor-results
And here are their national exit polls from 2012-2022:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2012-election/all/president/
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/2014/us/house/exitpoll/
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/president/
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2018-election/midterms/
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-elections/exit-polls/
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2022-elections/exit-polls
The average per capita personal income of each Michigan county came from the US’s Bureau of Economic Analysis: https://shorturl.at/jtyM5
The question about whether the 2020 election should be overturned came from a May 2022 poll by Detroit’s chamber of commerce: https://www.detroitchamber.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/May-2022-Michigan-Voter-Survey-Report_Final.pdf
The data on Middle Eastern and North African Americans came from the 2020 US Census (which was the first one ever to ask about the US’s MENA population!): https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/09/2020-census-dhc-a-mena-population.html
Make sure you never miss behind the scenes content in the Vox Video newsletter, sign up here: http://vox.com/video-newsletter
Vox.com is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what's really driving the events in the headlines. Check out http://www.vox.com
Support Vox's reporting with a one-time or recurring contribution: http://vox.com/contribute-now
Shop the Vox merch store: http://vox.com/store
Watch our full video catalog: http://goo.gl/IZONyE
Follow Vox on Facebook: http://facebook.com/vox
Follow Vox on Twitter: http://twitter.com/voxdotcom
Follow Vox on TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@voxdotcom