Trump wins Michigan, nearly completing swing-state sweep

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — President-elect Donald Trump has won Michigan — adding 15 electoral votes to his total and nearly completing a sweep of the swing states.

Trump leads Vice President Kamala Harris 49.8% to 48.3%, with 98% of votes counted, the Associated Press reports.

Ahead of the polls opening, election guru Nate Silver insisted a win in Michigan for Trump would all but seal the 2024 election for the former president.

With his triumph in the midwestern state, Trump has managed to repeat his 2016 victory, in which he turned the state red for the first time since George H.W. Bush defeated Michael Dukakis in 1988. 

True to its battleground status, Michigan saw a tight race.

In 2016, Trump beat Hillary Clinton by about 11,000 votes. In 2020, Joe Biden beat Trump by about 154,000 votes.

Throughout the campaign, both parties courted working-class voters in Michigan, home to much of America’s auto industry.

That was apparent in the venues both candidates chose. Harris urged voters to “thank a union member” at a Labor Day rally in Detroit while Trump chose factory floors as a backdrop for his rallies.

Trump also courted Michigan voters by appealing to grievances over the auto industry’s decline and the outsourcing of the state’s once-thriving manufacturing sector.

Both candidates offered working-class Michiganders a distinct vision for the future as they sparred on issues of electric vehicle mandates and taxation.

While Trump lamented the condition of Detroit, saying it “never came back” from its troubles, the vice president and her surrogates claimed positive developments under Democratic governance.

The Israel-Hamas war also affected campaign rhetoric in Michigan more than in any other swing state.

The “Free Palestine” movement was a headache for the Democratic Party from early on, as more than 100,000 Democrats voted “uncommitted” in the February presidential primary in protest of President Biden’s handling of the war.

These issues did not blow over, as polling showed Muslim and Arab Americans gravitating in larger numbers to third-party candidates such as the Green Party’s Jill Stein.

The Trump campaign also attempted to use this issue to its advantage. A team led by former ambassador Ric Grenell and Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law Massad Boulos organized several community events targeted at Muslim voters disillusioned by Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas War.

These efforts within the Muslim and Middle Eastern communities reflected a broader strategy in which the Trump campaign worked to expand its coalition into traditionally Democratic voting blocs: black voters, Arab Americans and union members.

Democrats attempted to make abortion a central issue of the race in Michigan, though it’s been protected by the Michigan Constitution since 2022.

Dem candidates ran numerous attack ads against Republicans claiming they’d support a national ban on the procedure.

Ultimately, in a referendum on the Biden-Harris administration, Michiganders voted to elect Trump as president by a narrow margin.