Will Arab Americans flip Michigan?
Or will recent MAGA underperformances keep the state in Democratic hands?
Michigan was the unlikeliest of red states in 2016. It took a full 10 point swing to the right from the 2012 results to produce the narrowest Trump margin in the nation—just 0.2 points. In 2020, Michigan reverted back to its Democratic leanings enough for Biden to win the state by 2.8 points, a larger swing than the other Blue Wall states. Michigan’s feint right in 2016 but swing left in 2020 likely makes it the toughest of the Blue Wall states for Trump to win next Tuesday. But his renewed appeal to blue collar union workers and Democratic troubles with Arab American voters has Republicans feeling like it’s 2016 all over again.
Basically everything went right for Donald Trump in Michigan in 2016. He advanced everywhere except the most highly-educated areas, and for the most part, kept his losses in the most populated of these places to 5 points or less. Trump’s 2016 victory included strong swings in the urban and suburban working class, a considerable force in Michigan. He gained 16 points in the white working class Detroit suburbs, centered on Macomb County, and 14 points in the blue-collar, minority-heavy parts of smaller cities like Flint, Lansing, and Kalamazoo.
Michigan’s vote is distributed in the same rough 4-2-4 pattern as other Rust Belt states: 4 out of 10 votes cast in large metros, in this case Detroit, 2 of 10 in smaller cities, and 4 of 10 in rural areas. It ties Wisconsin as the most blue-collar state in the Rust Belt, with just 36% of the vote coming from college graduates, but this vote tilts urban blue collar — with the working class Detroit suburbs nearly matching the college-educated suburbs in vote share—something you don’t see in Philadelphia. This suburban blue collar base combines with a very downscale and racially diverse urban vote to create a sizable base for potential Trump gains outside of rural areas. And as with elsewhere, “Trump gains” not only mean votes flipping over to him, but potential collapses in Democratic turnout, as we saw in 2016 in Detroit.
Here is the custom political geography for Michigan, built once again with the help of Colin Miller’s Redistricter:
When Michigan was voting solidly blue, by 9.6 points for Obama in 2012, the bulk of the state’s Democratic margins came from the multiracial working class, with over half of Democratic net strength in Democratic-voting areas coming from Black precincts in Detroit, followed by blue-collar smaller cities, and in third, the white working class in places like Macomb County. Obama and Romney were effectively tied in Romney’s ancestral home in the upscale Detroit suburbs. Michigan was the beating heart of Obama’s successful bid for the white working class in 2008 and 2012.
In the Before Times, whatever GOP margins there were were mostly supplied by the ancestrally Dutch Grand Rapids area, with narrow victories among rural whites in the rest of the state.
By 2020, urban-rural polarization ruled everything in Michigan, just as it did everywhere else. All the net GOP advantages now came from rural areas, with only a narrow margin in and around Grand Rapids.
Elsewhere, Republicans had succeeded in zeroing out the Democratic advantage in the working class Detroit suburbs—winning it narrowly points in 2016 but losing it by less than a point in 2020. The balance of power in the Democratic coalition has shifted to the highly-educated suburbs and college towns, with Black Detroit contributing less than half of the overall margin in Democratic areas statewide.
Michigan probably does more than any other battleground to meet the literal definition of a “swing” state by swinging much more than its neighbors to the right in 2016 and more to the left in 2020. The following chart for paid subscribers visualizes raw vote swings over the last two election cycles. It shows Republican gains dwarfing Democratic ones in 2016, and then practically every region shifting left, albeit to a lesser degree, in 2020. While college-plus majorities separated Clinton-trending areas from Trump-trending ones in 2016, the line between pro-Trump and pro-Biden swings in 2020 was extremely low-income and extremely minority. “Mid-college” areas, with college graduation rates in the 30s, moved solidly against Democrats in 2016 but moved by 3-5 points to Biden in 2020, something we also saw in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Over these two elections, the working class and upscale Detroit suburbs traded places, with each moving 13 points right and 12 points left respectively. The academic liberals of the Ann Arbor Democratic People’s Republic raced left more emphatically in 2016, but they are a far-smaller slice of the state than the Madison D.P.R. is of Wisconsin. In the smaller cities, there was a distinctly anti-Trump swing in the Grand Rapids area, a function of a Dutch electorate more conservative than your typical Never Trumper, with the typical mix of working class Trump gains and college educated Trump losses in other cities. And the rural parts of Michigan moved basically as a unit in 2020—typically 20 points right—receding slightly in 2020 except for Central Michigan.
Metro Detroit — 40% of the vote
Like Georgia and Arizona, Michigan is a unipolar state when it comes to its metro areas: the large majority of its urban voters are clustered in and around Detroit.
On balance, Metro Detroit is more blue-collar than Philadelphia. The working class Detroit suburbs cast nearly as much of the vote as the more educated parts—centered in Oakland County. In Philadelphia, the split is 17 percent to 7 percent for the more educated suburbs, while in Detroit, it’s 16 to 15 percent.
Uniquely important to the Democratic coalition is the Black vote in Detroit, casting nearly 7 percent of the state’s vote. Any fall in turnout here will have reverberations for Democratic prospects statewide, and the steep drop in turnout here made the difference in 2016.
Arab-majority areas in cities like Dearborn and Hamtramck cast a small but potentially crucial 1.1 percent of the vote, and the areas in and around campus in Ann Arbor 1.5 percent.
Detroit Suburban Professionals, 16.4% of the vote, Biden +12 in 2020, D+12 since 2012
WWC Detroit Suburbs, 14.9% of the vote, Biden +1 in 2020, R+13 since 2012
Black Detroit, 6.7% of the vote, Biden +83 in 2020, R+7 since 2012
Arab Detroit, 1.1% of the vote, Biden +51 in 2020, D+2 since 2012
Ann Arbor D.P.R., 1.5% of the vote, Biden +71 in 2020, D+17 since 2012
Showing how well-disposed most areas in Michigan were to Trump’s candidacy in 2016, Trump only lost 4 points in the more educated Detroit suburbs in 2016, less than half of his losses in similar places elsewhere. In 2020, reality caught up and he lost 8 points—though this was no worse than his losses in major metro suburbs elsewhere. Over the entire 2012-20 period, Trump lost less in well-educated suburbs in Detroit than he did in Philadelphia and Milwaukee. These losses extended to the vote-rich working class suburbs, albeit with a smaller loss of 3.5 points.
With both an underperforming gubernatorial nominee and an abortion measure on the ballot, MAGA weakness in the Detroit suburbs was an issue for the GOP in 2022. But this underperformance was more pronounced in the blue-collar suburbs than in the white-collar ones. Gretchen Whitmer outran Joe Biden by 13 points in the blue-collar suburbs but “only” by 9 points among suburban professionals. Meanwhile, the pro-life side of the abortion referendum underperformed Trump on the margin by 17 points in the blue-collar suburbs and 14 points in the white-collar areas. These same blue collar areas swung 16 points to Trump in 2016—almost as much as any rural area—while receding by roughly 4 points in 2020. Abortion is a wedge issue Democrats are using to win back Obama-Trump voters, who were not in the GOP when it was identified more strongly with the pro-life movement.




Black Detroit voted for Joe Biden by 83 points in 2020, but this margin was down by around 7 points from the Obama 2012 high of 90 points. Even at such lopsided support levels, margin shifts do still matter a lot. And they matter more when you have the double-whammy of falling turnout, as you’ve had in every post-Obama election. Black-majority precincts in Detroit were the only region in Michigan to see turnout in raw vote numbers fall from 2012 to 2020, by 6 percent—even as the state’s vote as a whole went up by 17 percent.
This is a trend we see elsewhere, where the Black population in inner cities is gradually dispersing to suburbs (or to the South), making suburban GOP losses more a function of demographic change than people appreciate.
Arab Americans are a 58 percent majority in a political region that cast 1.1 percent of the state’s vote in 2020, but this understates their influence in the state’s politics. More than half of Arabs in the Detroit region live outside of places like Dearborn and Hamtramck. Nor is “Arab” in this context coterminous with “Muslim,” as the community includes many Christians.
Joe Biden won the Arab-majority neighborhoods by 50 points in 2020, a 2 point improvement from Obama in 2012. Polls of Arab Americans or Muslims suggest the potential for this margin to be erased or greatly reduced, with a large chunk of protest votes for Jill Stein over Gaza. If this happens, it would constitute as much of half-point shift in the margin in Michigan, more than one in six of the votes Trump would need to flip the state. And that’s just from the Arab-majority neighborhoods. This shift could be more than doubled by votes from Arabs in the rest of the Detroit metro, where they make up roughly 4 percent of the population.
Smaller Cities — 19% of the vote
Because much of the urban vote is concentrated in Detroit, Detroit’s smaller cities aren’t split out by individual city as I’ve done in other states—with the exception of Grand Rapids.
Elsewhere, Michigan’s other urban areas — from Flint to Lansing to Kalamazoo—are split into a more upscale college-educated bloc and a working class bloc, with the expected shifts in either direction.
Educated Smaller Cities, 5.6% of the vote, Biden +15 in 2020, D+11 since 2012
Working Class Smaller Cities, 5.4% of the vote, Biden +35 in 2020, R+14 since 2012
Dutch West Michigan, 9.7% of the vote, Trump +3 in 2020, D+14 since 2012
Michigan’s smaller cities are divided on educational lines much more than Pennsylvania or Wisconsin’s. And showing the underlying logic of demographic shifts in the Trump era, their shifts mirror those in the Detroit area, with more educated middle class areas shifting 11 points towards Democrats and blue-collar areas shifting 14 points Republican. The blue-collar areas are majority white, but with a substantial working class Black population. On the whole, this region is poorer than Black Detroit, with fewer high-income people over $200,000 (1.3 vs. 1.8 percent) and a lower college-graduation rate (18 vs. 19 percent). Most representative of this area is the old auto town of Flint, center of the Flint water crisis, which Hillary Clinton appealed to in the 2016 primaries but swung by double digits towards Trump that fall.
Grand Rapids, home to President Gerald Ford, is the largest Dutch population center in the U.S., home to the DeVos family and represented in Congress by Trump skeptic Peter Meijer, of the Meijer’s store family.
The Dutch Reformed share much in common with Mormons in their high levels of social trust and civic participation. They were largely immune to the entreaties of Trump the primary candidate, voting instead for the “true” conservative Ted Cruz in 2016 and underperforming for Trump throughout his primary runs and in both 2016 and 2020. While the pro-life side of the abortion ballot measure lagged Trump’s vote by double digits statewide, it held up pretty well in Dutch West Michigan—coming within 3 points of Trump’s 2020 margin, showing the region’s social conservatism. Trump himself has lost ground, however, even in the more rural parts of this region. Dutch West Michigan has shifted 13 points left in the age of Trump, similar to the Detroit suburbs, but on a lower college-educated share — 38 vs. 55 percent. The Grand Rapids area is also the fastest-growing part of the state, with an increase in the total vote of 25.4 percent between 2016 and 2020.
Rural Michigan — 41% of the vote
Michigan’s rural areas were ground zero for the Obama-Trump swing in 2016, with central and northern Michigan swinging by more than 20 points. As a whole, rural Michigan gave only narrow majorities to Republicans pre-Trump, with the normal margin now north of 25 points. That’s not quite the rural majorities Republicans get in Pennsylvania—upwards of 30 points, but slightly better than what they get in Wisconsin.
Lakeside Getaways, 2.8% of the vote, Trump +3 in 2020, D+6 since 2012
Southern Midlands, 11.9% of the vote, Trump +21 in 2020, R+12 since 2012
Southwest Michigan, 7.1% of the vote, Trump +25 in 2020, R+15 since 2012
East Central Michigan, 5.6% of the vote, Trump +29 in 2020, R+23 since 2012
West Central Michigan, 4.6% of the vote, Trump +31 in 2020, R+22 since 2012
Northern Michigan, 3.6% of the vote, Trump +34 in 2020, R+21 since 2012
The UP, 3.0% of the vote, Trump +17 in 2020, R+13 since 2012
We’ll start with the region’s outlier, the Lakeside Getaways region, places you’ll see prominently featured in Pure Michigan TV commercials. This region hugs Lake Michigan all the way from Muskegon and includes Traverse City, Mackinac Island and the Keweenaw peninsula in the UP. Popular with retirees and second homeowners, it’s trended slightly to the left in the Trump era, with a strong Covid-induced swing left of 8 points common to such places in other states.
The Southern Midlands capture the entirety of the state’s southeast excluding cities and suburbs. Given its proximity to the state’s urban centers, this “rural-lite” region more densely populated, a bit less Republican, and a bit more college-educated than most of its rural cousins (27 percent vs. less than 20 percent elsewhere). In this, it resembles the southern and eastern countryside regions of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, where solid Republican majorities face downward pressure from new developments at the outskirts of the metro. The area voted for Trump by 21 points in 2020, an increase of 13 points from 2012—far from the most impressive showing among the rurals. And Trump lost 3 points of margin here in 2020. The Southwest Michigan region, encompassing the balance of southern Michigan, cast 7 percent of the state’s vote and backed Trump by 25 points in 2020. It moved towards Trump by 16 points in his two races.
The strongest Republican bastions are to the north, in the central and northern parts of the mitt. Together, these regions cast 14 percent of the state’s vote in 2020, backing Trump by 29 points in East Central Michigan, 31 points in West Central Michigan, and 34 points in Northern Michigan. These GOP margins are largely a Trump-era creation, with 23, 23, and 21 point swings from 2012 to 2020, respectively. Trump held up better here than he did down south, even managing to swing West Central Michigan his way by 1.2 points in 2020.
I don’t include the Upper Peninsula (“UP”) in this group because it has its own political culture, more an extension of Wisconsin than the rest of Michigan. Trump won it by 17 points, with “only” a 13 point swing since 2012. While Republican enough to be considered safe, it was a swing region not that long ago, with the defeat of pro-life Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak in 2010 marking the region’s political transition. What’s different about the politics of the UP will be familiar to readers of my Wisconsin piece: Scandinavians, whose presence anywhere lowers the margins the GOP receives from rural areas.


A final note about Michigan is that Democrats have done a better of winning elections here lately, and have done so with stronger overperformances among rural voters. The pro-life side of the 2022 abortion referendum underperformed Trump by anywhere between 15 to 21 points in rural Michigan, a bigger gap than anywhere else in the state except for the white working class Detroit suburbs. While the pro-life side did overperform in some places where the GOP hopes to make gains — by 32 points in Arab Detroit and 18 points in Black Detroit — it was not nearly enough to make up for losses among the white working class. And in regular partisan elections in 2022, Democrats also did better in rural Michigan, with Gretchen Whitmer’s overperformance throughout these regions exceeding her statewide overperformance of 8 points.
To have a chance in Michigan, the GOP is banking on favorable trends among minorities in Detroit. But it likely doesn’t work unless the white working class votes a lot more like it did in 2016 than it did in 2020 and 2022.
Paid subscribers will find exclusive charts below. As a paid subscriber, you will also receive a free preview of the final post in this series, on Michigan, and full access to the archive on all the previous battleground states covered, including Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania (part 1 and part 2), Wisconsin, and North Carolina. I also recently adapted this series for a piece in the New York Times on the 21 micro-communities that could decide the election.
These geographic breakdowns take time to produce, and if you appreciate the analysis and the visuals, I hope you’ll consider becoming a paid subscriber. -Patrick
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