A year ago, I all but declared the Republican Party dead in Michigan. It wasn't exactly a full-blown obituary, but at that point, it felt like the GOP's hopes of making Michigan more competitive had slipped away.
In 2016, Trump shocked many by winning the state. Michigan had long been written off as a battleground state in name only. The last time it voted for a Republican presidential candidate was in 1992, and there was little reason to believe that Hillary wouldn't take the state. But Trump narrowly edged her out, offering a glimmer of hope that with the right messaging, a Republican can win in the state.
Since then, things have gone downhill. In 2018, Gretchen Whitmer was elected governor by a nearly double-digit margin. That same year, Trump-endorsed Senate candidate John James failed to oust incumbent Democrat Debbie Stabenow — though the results were much tighter than many expected.
James tried again in 2020 to oust incumbent Democrat Gary Peters. It was a close race, but James again failed to win. That same year, Trump lost the state to Joe Biden. Two years later, Whitmer managed to get reelected by an even larger margin than she did in 2018, despite her poor handling of COVID-19. Democrats also won control of both the state House and Senate for the first time in nearly forty years.
The signs were all pointing to Trump's 2016 victory, which was extremely narrow, as an outlier. But what a difference a Joe Biden presidency makes, as multiple polls show that Michigan has swung towards Trump and the GOP.
Recent polling from CNN shows the state leaning toward Trump, and the network's current Electoral College projection map has Trump taking the state.
According to a Detroit News and WDIV-TV poll conducted by the Glengariff Group, Trump has a commanding eight-point lead over Biden, 47% to 39%, and that lead expands to 12 points when you throw in third-party candidates. A mere 17% of those surveyed said that Biden deserved a second term.
"Those who gave Biden negative reviews were asked an open-ended question about why they had an unfavorable opinion of him,” The Detroit News wrote of the poll. "The most frequent answers were related to his age, his general level of competence, and his mental competence with 41% of the responses connected to those topics."
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“If I were a Democrat in Michigan, I would be breaking the emergency fire alarms in the White House and demanding to know what the plan is for Michigan,” Richard Czuba, founder of Glengariff Group, told the paper. “Because these numbers are very bad for any incumbent of any party.”
📊 MICHIGAN GE: Glengariff Group
— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) January 9, 2024
(R) Trump 47% (+8)
(D) Biden 39%
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(R) Haley 44% (+10)
(D) Biden 34%
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(D) Whitmer 49% (+4)
(R) Trump 45%
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(R) Trump 45% (+5)
(D) Newsom 40%
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(R) Trump 41% (+12)
(D) Biden 29%
(NL) Cheney 8%
(G) Stein 6%
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(R) Trump 42% (+11)
(D) Biden 31%… pic.twitter.com/eWJct5rbo0
But what makes this poll a huge deal is that it shows that Michigan Democrats shouldn't assume that Michigan is a solid blue state. "The poll's findings are warning signs for Michigan Democrats who've scored a series of political victories over the last six years and have taken control of state government," the paper writes. "The numbers arrived as the Michigan Republican Party faces financial turmoil and after Michigan's Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, won her reelection campaign in November 2022 by more than 10 percentage points."
In fairness, I wouldn't bet on Trump winning Michigan by eight points, but I can see him taking it by roughly four points, which would be a sharp rebuke of Joe Biden's policies and a clear indication that Michigan is indeed a swing state that Republicans need to invest more time and energy into.
