It's Trump: Former president becomes future president in sweeping Michigan, nation
Republican former President Donald Trump on Wednesday completed perhaps the most miraculous political turnaround in American history, riding a wave of populist support and disgust over inflation and illegal immigration to overcome his 2020 defeat and ongoing legal challenges to win election as the nation's 47th chief executive.
Michigan, a key swing state, was called for the former president by the Associated Press just before 1 p.m. Wednesday. Earlier in the day, Trump was declared the winner nationally over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, and the win in Michigan gave him at least 292 Electoral College votes, 22 more than needed to declare victory, according to the AP's unofficial count, with wins in the key swing states of Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as well.
In Michigan, with 98% of the estimated vote counted, Trump led 49.7% to Harris' 48.3%.
"Look what happened — is this crazy?" Trump told a throng of supporters in Florida early Wednesday morning, calling the effort that delivered him the win "the greatest political movement of all time.” Having run on promises that he would institute mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and impose stiff tariffs on imported goods as a way to boost manufacturing and "make America great again," Trump said his win, coupled with a new GOP majority in the U.S. Senate, amounted to “an unprecedented and powerful mandate."
It was a valid claim, given that it appeared Trump had also won the national popular vote, a feat that eluded him in 2016 when he narrowly beat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and took the Electoral College. Four years later, he lost those states, as well as Arizona and Georgia, to Democrat Joe Biden, who became president despite Trump's false claims that the election had been fraudulent.
By winning, Trump repudiated Democratic charges that his efforts to overturn that election — for which he was impeached and criminally charged on accusations he spurred on a mob of supporters that attacked the U.S. Capitol as Congress met to certify Biden's election on Jan. 6, 2021 — made him unfit for office and put himself in place to radically change the American bureaucracy much as he has remade the Republican Party in his populist image.
Across the country, Trump appeared to overperform compared with Harris in key constituencies and on the issues that defined the election. Exit polls indicated that, among Michigan voters, nearly two-thirds described the economy as "not so good or poor." Among those voters, 73% preferred Trump, NBC News reported.
And while 34% of Michigan voters viewed "the state of democracy" as their chief issue — and Harris was winning with 82% of those voters, compared with 17% for Trump — the exit poll indicated that 39% considered immigration or the economy their top issue and overwhelmingly supported the former president by 77% or more. Abortion rights, which Democrats used to motivate voters, was mentioned by 17% of voters as their top issue. Voters who named abortion rights as their top issue did favor Harris, but by a smaller margin than those who favored Trump on other issues.
Democrats had targeted Trump on abortion because he had previously run as an opponent to the practice and nominated three conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices who voted with a conservative majority two years ago to overturn the constitutional guarantee to abortion in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, handing the issue back to the states. In Michigan, voters enshrined abortion protections in the state constitution in 2022. In the presidential election this year, Trump and other Republicans ran saying they would do nothing to overturn those state protections.
In Michigan, another key issue appeared to be concerns over Biden's and the Democrats' push to promote the production and sales of electric vehicles, which Republicans argued amounted to an "EV mandate." While no mandate actually exists, the issue resonated with voters according to poll results; Trump has said he would get rid of those standards that would push automakers to make and sell more EVs, which could spur the production and sale of more gasoline-powered vehicles.
"What was unique in Michigan was this whole EV thing, the electric cars," said Michigan Republican Party Chairman Pete Hoekstra, who was Trump's hand-picked man to rescue the embattled state GOP several months ago and delivered a stunning win in the state. He said once Michigan Republicans fully recognized how the adoption of EVs could result in fewer auto jobs and antipathy in the state to such a change, they took it to the Trump campaign, which took it up.
"We saw how powerful a political message it was. ... It’s what fracking was in Pennsylvania. Michiganders looked at it and said these are our jobs," Hoekstra said, adding that immigration and inflation were two other major issues.
Another, he said, was foreign conflicts, with Russia at war in Ukraine and Israel battling Hamas and Hezbollah in Gaza and Lebanon. Leaning heavily into his assertion that he avoided any entanglement in foreign wars while president, Trump suggested he could end both conflicts. And while many in Michigan's Arab American and Muslim communities said they could not support Harris, given that she, like Biden, declined to more forcefully demand an Israeli cease-fire, Trump was able to court some of those same voters while others split with Green Party nominee Jill Stein.
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In Dearborn, the center of Michigan's large Arab American and Muslim communities, Trump won 42% to Harris' 36%. Stein got 18%. Four years ago in Dearborn, Biden won with 69% of the vote.
But Trump didn't only improve his result in those communities. In Detroit, the state's largest city and one with a Black majority larger than almost any other city in the nation, Harris — running to become the first woman, first Black woman and first woman of South Asian descent to become president — saw her share of the vote decline compared with Biden's four years ago. In 2020, Biden got 94% of the Detroit vote, to Trump's 5%. This year, Harris got 90% to Trump's 8%.
Exit polls indicated that among the 79% of Michigan voters who were white, Trump won 54%-44%. And while Harris won among Black voters, 90%-9%, that was slightly under Biden's number from four years ago. Trump did even better among Black men, winning 12% of that bloc. And among the 6% of Michigan voters who are Hispanic, Trump won 62%-35%.
"We lost," said U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Ann Arbor, who won reelection herself but had warned that the presidential election would be close. "There's a message to us as Democrats and we have to hear it. The people spoke. We have to respect the integrity of the system." She also acknowledged it was immigration, the economy and the situation in the Middle East that swung the election in Michigan.
Jonathan Hanson, a lecturer in statistics at the University of Michigan School of Public Policy, said Harris was unable to overcome Trump’s messaging on those key topics, especially economy and immigration, and pointed to Macomb County as an example of Trump appealing to blue-collar workers.
In 2020, Trump defeated Biden in Macomb County by about 40,000 votes, winning the swing county 53%-45%. This year, he expanded his advantage there, winning by almost 70,000 votes, or 56%-42%.
And that trend was seen statewide. Harris won Kent, a key county in west Michigan, but slightly underperformed Biden there. The same happened in Washtenaw County, a solidly Democratic county; in Oakland County, Harris won 54%-44%, but that was 2 percentage points worse than Biden did, and Trump saw his support rise by 2 points there. Trump also flipped Saginaw County, a bellwether county that predicted the statewide winner in presidential contests going back to 1992.
Inflation, which has abated but has still outpaced wage gains during Biden's years in office, and immigration were "clearly two important issues,” Hanson said. "It seems like neither the Biden campaign or then the Harris campaign ever really got clear messaging on that (which) helped them make their case."
Detroit Free Press staff writer Arpan Lobo contributed to this report.
Contact Todd Spangler: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter@tsspangler.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Trump sweeps Michigan, other swing states in catapult to Oval Office