Michigan has been a bellwether in national politics in recent years, voting for the winning presidential candidate in the last five presidential elections. This year, with a term-limited governor and every seat in the state Legislature up for re-election, something like a political free-for-all is taking shape.
Michigan is currently one of just three states, along with Minnesota and Pennsylvania, that have a divided legislature. Democrats control the state Senate with a narrow 19-18 margin and Republicans control the House 58-52. The Center for Politics at the University of Virginia considers both chambers to be a partisan “toss-up” in the coming elections, and cites Michigan as one of the only states where a flip is possible for either party.
The general political mood favors Democrats in Michigan just as it does all over the country, with President Donald Trump’s approval ratings at one of their lowest points in either of his terms. Outgoing Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, remains among the most popular governors in the nation. But there are complicating factors for Democrats in the state as well.
Michigan House Speaker Matt Hall, a brash Trumpian Republican, has made himself a key figure in state politics over the last several terms. While pushing to cut state spending, he has forged a tenuous partnership with Whitmer, and to some extent sidelined legislative leaders in Whitmer’s party. The divided Legislature struggled to pass a budget last year, missing several deadlines before cutting a deal. In the process, the Legislature passed vanishingly few laws — something Hall and many of his fellow small-government Republicans consider a point of pride. Democrats would love to elect a speaker of their own. Three or four additional seats would likely do it.
An early test of the political winds will come in May with a special election for the state Senate. The seat was previously held by a Democrat who resigned to join the U.S. House of Representatives last year. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, a national group focused on winning state legislative majorities, is prioritizing the May race in Michigan and says it “will set the tone for the midterms when the whole chamber is on the ballot.” State Democrats like their chances. Curtis Hertel, chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, says there were more Democratic votes in the district during the primary earlier this year than in the Democratic primary four years ago, which he sees as a measure of Democratic voters’ motivation at the current moment. “In terms of strategy, we’ve got to knock a lot of doors. It’s individual hand-to-hand combat and conversation,” Hertel says. “That’s how you win these legislative races.”
Meanwhile, the race to replace Whitmer in the governor’s office is shaping up to be a three-way-fight, with potential danger for Democrats. Former Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, who was elected as a Democrat, is running in the governor’s race as an independent. Most polls show Duggan running behind the leading Democratic and Republican candidates (the party primaries won’t be held until August). But one recent poll, conducted by a group friendly to Duggan, shows tiny margins separating the three candidates. Duggan won’t have the backing of a major party apparatus, but he does have a stellar reputation as the mayor who turned Detroit around. And he’ll be free to pick and choose positions without having to answer to party leaders. If he pulls support in his hometown of Detroit, the heart of Democratic Michigan, that could mean disaster for downballot Democrats.
But not necessarily, says Matt Grossman, a Michigan State University political scientist. Early polls showed Duggan pulling support from Republicans as well as Democrats. And likely Duggan voters would be “perfectly comfortable” pulling the lever for a Republican or Democratic state legislator at the same time, Grossman says.
But it matters to state legislative candidates how the governor’s race develops. Most state lawmakers are relative no-names. A popular gubernatorial candidate acting as a party standard bearer can help move voters to the polls, where they’re likely to vote for a straight ticket. An ascendant third-party candidate would complicate that dynamic. And most state legislative candidates won’t have the money to run expensive ad campaigns promoting their own races.
For a time around the turn of this century, Michigan was considered a solid Democratic state, part of the Democrats’ “blue wall,” voting for Democrats in every presidential election from 1992 until 2016. Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss in Michigan, along with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, shocked her campaign, and it sparked a long Democratic freakout about campaign strategy and tactics, about the role of the white working class and progressive factions within the Democratic Party, that still hasn’t ended. It was a factor in the most recent presidential election too, as a large Arab-American voting bloc around the city of Dearborn helped move the state from Democrats again in protest of Kamala Harris and Joe Biden’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza.
On a longer timeline, Michigan is a true swing state, voting for 13 Democrats and 12 Republicans in presidential elections over the last 100 years. The dynamics of this year’s elections — a powerful MAGA house speaker, a popular outgoing Democratic governor, a viable third-party candidate — may not provide a clear indication of which way it will swing next.
“I predict chaos,” says Adam Bitely, a public affairs strategist who formerly worked for Republicans in the state Senate. “It’s going to be every candidate for themself.”
