Michigan - 2024 Election Compendium

Topic: 2024 Election Analysis

Michigan 2024 Presidential Election Review

Author’s Note: All 2024 Election Reviews can be found here.

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Outcome

Trump +1.4% (+80,103)

My Prediction

Trump +2.5% (+140,722)

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Preface

With Pennsylvania poised to vote to the right of the rest of the three “blue wall” battlegrounds (despite the tendency of Wisconsin to vote the furthest right of the three), and North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada looking good in the run-up to the election, Trump could have won without Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan. In fact, many pundits foresaw Trump carrying Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, but not Michigan. The Great Lakes State hasn’t voted right of Pennsylvania since 1988, and Michigan, Nevada, or Wisconsin usually occupied the lists of battleground states many pundits and analysts figured were most likely to back Harris.

Michigan is Pennsylvania’s political cousin, only with a slightly smaller population and four fewer electoral votes (15, compared to Pennsylvania’s 19). The first thing that made it clear to me that Michigan would be drifting right from its highly corrupted 2020 result (Biden +2.8%) was the massive partisan shift in the Keystone State in favor of the Republican Party, which you can read about here. Michigan does not register its voters by party, so my next best option is to infer the likely registration shifts off Pennsylvania’s, and consider the historical fact that the two states have shifted together in the same direction in every presidential election since 1948. They had also shifted with Florida in the same direction since that year in a streak that suddenly snapped in 2020, when Florida became 2.2% more Republican, and Pennsylvania and Michigan ran off to the left for Biden (a big tell that things weren’t on the up and up).

Pennsylvania’s registration numbers made it obvious the state was moving right – the question then was, “by how much?” I arrived at my prediction of Trump +2.5% in Michigan by first pegging Pennsylvania at Trump +2.8% and working left from there. Michigan was this many ballots to the left of Pennsylvania in each of his two runs leading into this election:

· 2016 33,588

· 2020 73,633

· Average 53,611

Setting 2024 turnout by total votes equal to 2020’s and deducting the average of 53,611 from Pennsylvania’s margin I arrived at Trump +140,722, or +2.5%. Unfortunately, thanks to the capacity to cheat, we may never know where the two states should sit in relation to one another. Michigan is by far the most inherently corrupt of the battlegrounds, and has more than 83% of its population registered to vote, when only 77% of any population is over the age of 18, and therefore old enough to vote. This means hundreds of thousands of ineligible entries appear on the rolls, in a state already exposed for harboring voter registration fraud rings in many of its population dense counties. That was the only caveat for me making any allowance at all for Trump to be deprived of Michigan’s electoral votes in the now infamous New York Times article panning my picks and methodology. In the run-up to the election, I questioned why Michigan was even allowed to participate in awarding electoral votes with such an obvious level of corruption in the voter roll that was so bad, it received public scrutiny.

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Analysis

· Michigan wound up sitting 40,163 ballots left of Pennsylvania this year, alarmingly close to its average of the first two elections and between the two values in both of Trump’s previous efforts in Michigan.

· 77 of 83 (92.8%) counties in Michigan shifted toward Trump in terms of percentage margin, meaning he either won them by a higher percentage than he did in 2020 (or flipped them in the case of two counties), or lost them by a smaller percentage. The most notable shift occurred in Wayne County, home to core Detroit and much of the surrounding area, which no Republican presidential nominee has won since 1928. Trump made up 9.2% there, moving 84,445 ballots in margin and holding Harris to the lowest Democrat vote share (62.5%) in the county since 1992.

· Trump’s gains in Wayne County were the product of lower urban turnout, primarily the relaxing of major ballot harvesting activities present in 2020, plus his own inroads with minority communities, such as Arab Americans, which won him the City of Dearborn in one of the biggest surprises of the election cycle. Here are the margins for the past three cycles in the four main counties making up the Detroit metro area, a nationally recognized Democrat stronghold:

· Referencing the chart above and accepting that Harris’ ballot totals are inflated and retain much of the “fortification” present in the 2020 race, Trump over-performed his deficit from his winning statewide 2016 campaign by 15,297 ballots, and most notably in Wayne and Macomb Counties. His improvement in Oakland County marks a significant move rightward for this cycle, but still puts him far left of his 2016 deficit. Wayne County had, by far, the biggest collapse in Democrat support, down 10.1% and 60,138 ballots since 2020, which underscores the volume of election manipulation present there in 2020, the loss of minority support, and a potential planning oversight given that there are surprising Democrat gains elsewhere in the state. Here is how the Detroit metro compares to the outlying 79 counties in Michigan over the past three cycles:

· I correctly predicted Trump would flip Muskegon and Saginaw Counties, and narrowly missed out on predictions he would flip Kent (which he won in 2016) and Genesee Counties. Trump’s win of Muskegon was the first GOP presidential win of the county since 1988, although he should have carried it in a fair 2020 race.

· Harris gained ballots over Biden’s totals in 53 of 83 counties, including sizable gains in both Kent and Ottawa Counties in western Michigan. She lost ballots from Biden’s count in 30 counties but failed to dip below Hillary Clinton’s totals in any counties, although she lagged Clinton in 13 Indiana counties, 33 Illinois counties, and 38 counties in Ohio. Her gains were contiguous throughout almost all western Michigan, but she lagged Biden in eastern Michigan. This suggests an over-performance among ballot harvesting operations in the west, and an underperformance, combined with organic minority vote shift to Trump, in the east in a state that counted nearly 2 million absentee ballots (down from 2020). See map below outlining counties with gains and losses:

· Now, contrast that map with a map contrasting these counties in Michigan with all counties in Indiana lying north of the Indianapolis suburban counties, and all counties of northwest Ohio, excluding any suburban counties of the Cleveland, Columbus, or Dayton metro areas:

· In comparing Michigan’s ballot data to Pennsylvania’s, particularly from smaller counties, it appears Democrats have mastered ballot scraping in the state, and in the key states of the Midwest as a whole. It appears they can identify vacant registrations, blanket them with mail-ballot requests, and spend the early voting window gathering the ballots to make nearly identical collection counts in successive elections. Here is a selection of 27 counties, mostly rural or small, that produced nearly identical ballot counts from the 2020 election, and in some cases, resisted political trends that left similar counties in other states drastically reduced in terms of Democrat vote count:

· Macomb County, a collar county of Detroit and large manufacturing center that was key in flipping Michigan to Trump in 2016 most resembles Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County, which I believe produces more counterfeit ballots than any county in the Keystone State, including Philadelphia County. While it slightly lagged its 2020 Democrat ballot count by 4.0% (-8,975), given Trump’s gains there and the overall trends in like counties, it would appear Macomb has held on to most of its counterfeit 2020 ballot count. Here are similar losses from regional industrial counties, as featured in the Pennsylvania report outlining Allegheny County’s likely corruption:

o Erie County, NY loss of 18,169 (-7.0%)

o Cuyahoga County, OH loss of 39,792 (-9.6%) – lowest Democrat ballot count since 2000

o Lucas County, OH loss of 9,091 (-7.9%) – lowest Democrat ballot count since 1996

o Mahoning County, OH loss of 7,005 (-12.2%) – lowest Democrat ballot count since 1932

o Marion County, IN loss of 26,053 (-10.5%)

o Lake County, IN loss of 15,784 (-12.6%) – lowest Democrat ballot count since 2000

o Cook County, IL loss of 278,152 (-16.1%) – lowest Democrat ballot count since 2004

Keep in mind, Macomb County is losing population since 2020 according to estimates and should not be capable of sustaining such a high Democrat vote count in the face of massive Trump gains and a working-class swing heavily in his favor. The Democrats may have their entire margin of victory in the U.S. Senate race contained entirely within Macomb County.

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Quality Checks

Statewide Presidential Ballot Count

· 2004 4,839,252

· 2008 5,010,606 (+171,354, +3.5%)

· 2012 4,745,316 (-265,290, -5.3%)

· 2016 4,824,542 (+79,226, +1.7%)

· 2020 5,547,186 (+722,644, +15.0%)

· 2024 5,674,485 (+127,299, +2.3%)

The ballot counts above resemble those I detailed in the Pennsylvania compendium entry. The state had stagnant and predictable ballot counts from 2004 through 2016, then a massive COVID-inspired fraud fest that spiked the ballot count in 2020, then a ballot jump in 2024 that is in line with previous single-cycle spikes, but when considering the jump in two cycles, one that leaps off the page as clearly out of statistical normalcy. This means Michigan figured out how to make most of those counterfeit ballots from 2020 stick, and they did it the same way it was done in Pennsylvania, but didn’t have enough to get over the organic Trump bump and urban erosion of their real votes they rely upon to be there every cycle.

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Key Counties

Wayne County

When Michigan was reliably Republican in presidential elections, GOP candidates would land in the upper 30s or around 40 percent of the vote (Reagan had 42.3% in 1984) in Wayne County, which contains not only the decaying slums of Detroit, but working-class outlying areas with a large blue collar voting base that isn’t high on woke politics championed by affluent white leftists . Whites still make up 47.8% of the population according to the latest census, while blacks are 37.3% but trending downward as Latinos pick up the slack. Wayne will trend toward competitiveness like the rest of the nation in places Latinos are growing as a share of population, and sustained attention to anti-crime measures, economic populism, and continuing to dig into the electoral fraud and registration corruption can keep Wayne, like Philadelphia, from getting worse, and by default, position Michigan to favor Republicans if rural margins can be sustained, and progress throughout the Detroit metro can accelerate. Wayne contributed 15.1% of the 2024 ballot count and must be kept below devastating blowout Democrat margins for statewide GOP candidates to have a shot.

With the Democrat ballot count down more than 10% in Wayne County this year, largely owned to minority Democrats shifting to the right and others, like black men, not turning out at previous levels (or being artificially turned out), Harris’s shot to win Michigan was practically dead on arrival before we even consider the miniature rebellion by Arab voters (more than 2% of Michigan’s population) over the Israel-Gaza conflict and how it is being handled politically. I’m not confident, given higher than expected Democrat ballot counts in far more conservative counties, that Gretchen Whitmer didn’t have a hand in hamstringing Harris in the state’s largest county, in which Democrats need blowout numbers to win in the age of Trump.

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Oakland County

Oakland County is to Detroit and Wayne County politically what Montgomery County is to Philadelphia, almost to the exact detail. It was once a loyally Republican suburban stronghold that would offset the Detroit vote but has succumbed in the past three decades to Democrat rule and electoral control as Detroit has moved north, and locals have drifted left with the social tide. Here are Republican losing presidential margins since Democrats took it over:

1996 -22,029

2000 -6,882

2004 -2,754

2008 -95,610

2012 -52,488

2016 -53,867

2020 -108,177

2024 -81,728

Ever since Barack Obama won his blowout win, margins have gotten steadily worse for GOP nominees in Oakland County, which is 70% white, 13.9% black, and surprisingly, 8.8% Asian. Trump’s improvements with minorities in this county brought the first reprieve in margin of defeat since 2004, and moved 26,449 ballots in overall margin toward Trump, closing just over a sixth of the statewide ballot gap between Trump and Biden from four years ago. Keeping Oakland County steady while continuing to dent margins in Wayne County is essential for creating an environment statewide that will allow for Republican victories to be more frequent, and investigating the corruption of voter registration, particularly in population-dense areas made to accommodate new residents, is key to curbing manipulation.

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Kent County

Macomb County, which is pound-for-pound one of the worst in my estimates on a continual basis, could be featured here, but is featured in detail in commentary above, so I am going to save this space for a county on the other side of the state that is home to most of the Grand Rapids metro area. Kent County is the fourth-most populated county in the state, and it had strong population growth (9.2%) in the 2010s according to the latest census. It is a former Republican urban stronghold which backed every GOP nominee except for three from 1940 through 2016, then flipped against Trump in 2020, although Biden’s gains are extremely abnormal and most certainly the product of the fortification celebrated by Democrats this year. It, along with neighboring Ottawa County, is one of two counties to reach what I call a Grade 2 Democrat gain (more than 2,000 net new ballots), and my mapping research of Michigan considers it highly likely that the county is the origin point of a large ballot harvesting apparatus that is likely behind the registration fraud operation in nearby Muskegon County, and the abnormal ballot counts in neighboring counties (Ottawa, Kent, Muskegon, Barry). Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf, one of few sheriffs heavily engaged in combating election corruption at the national level, agrees with my assessment.

Kent has swung from a +54,292 margin for Bush in 2004 to a -19,948 margin for Trump in 2024, which makes for a net swing of 74,240 against the GOP nominees. If not for the massive swing of the overwhelmingly white rural counties toward Trump, Michigan would be long gone. It is essential to get a handle on statewide election corruption, especially with regard to the unacceptable voter registration database, to ensure this county doesn’t continue to slide and create similar impacts in other heavily Republican counties nearby (Ottawa County had the largest Democrat gain this cycle at +4,948).

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Opportunities for Election Manipulation

Familiarize yourself with the grading criteria for my election ratings. Here is how Michigan rates with regard to the most common election demerits and its own unique traits:

· Voter ID – Michigan has a photo ID requirement for in-person voting, but there are workarounds available.

· Same Day Registration – Same day registration is allowed in Michigan.

· Ballot Harvesting – Like Pennsylvania, Michigan has reasonable ballot harvesting laws, but enforcement is lacking and does not deter the practice, which can be easily spotted by trend analysis and precinct mapping to spot for ballot bloat.

· Unique Corruption – Michigan has been exposed for covering up voter registration fraud rings, particularly in a major 2023 news story involving one in Muskegon County active during the 2020 election. Notably, similar registration fraud rings were exposed this cycle in Pennsylvania in multiple large counties. The state’s Attorney General, Dana Nessel, has threatened election integrity activists with imprisonment and police persecution for drawing attention to Michigan’s endless examples of election-related malfeasance.

· Automatic Voter Registration – Michigan operates Automatic Voter Registration, which has only entrenched Michigan’s voter registration corruption, as evidenced by the state having hundreds of thousands of more voters registered than there is an available pool of eligible voters statewide. The Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, has suggested the state is helpless to clean its voter rolls and responds harshly to citizens who expect the state to run fair elections. As a reminder, more than 83% of Michigan’s total population (including minors) is registered to vote, when only 77% of any population is over the age of 18 and therefore old enough to cast a ballot.

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The Road Ahead

In my commentary from several months ago, I noted that I didn’t think Josh Shapiro wanted to see his home state of Pennsylvania back Kamala Harris. Likewise, I think Whitmer, the state’s horrifically corrupt governor, is doing a silent fist pump that Harris tanked in the Great Lakes State, too. While Shapiro can run directly into the 2028 fray as a sitting governor, Whitmer is going to need to find something to keep her busy for a few months before she does what I expect her to do – throw herself into the ring as a more competent, cunning, and intelligent replacement for Harris looking to appeal to the angry woman vote, with the ability to say I’m the only candidate up here who can win Michigan, which voted for Trump because we left our working-class base behind. In fact, a Shapiro-Whitmer or Whitmer-Shapiro ticket wouldn’t surprise me at all, since Democrats will be trying to hoodwink working-class voters in the Midwest by any means necessary. That will sustain the Jewish-Arab conflict that we saw in this cycle, but then again, three years is a long time in politics and lots will change by then.

Michigan is moving almost entirely toward the Republican Party, excepting a few counties on Lake Michigan filling up with affluent Chicago liberals looking to retire to peace and tranquility far away from what their chosen political positions have created, and that will only be sustained if the party remains aligned with Trumpian ideology that prioritizes economic populism and poses a stark enough contrast with the globalist, woke agenda that threatens the very existence of industrial states once ruled by New Deal politics. Sustaining America First policies will ensure the state never returns to being a Democrat stronghold with insurmountable margins, especially as minorities continue to support the GOP in increasing numbers, but the Detroit metro and other assorted corruption networks will continue to find room for corrupting elections so long as the existing elections infrastructure remains in place and provides fraudsters with hundreds of thousands of fraudulent registrations to pin ballots to. Michigan requires a great deal of work to make elections fair and remove it from the Mount Rushmore of election fraud capitals nationwide.

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Final Grade and Closing Commentary

The Top 5 Election Integrity Targets in Michigan are (in no order):

· Wayne County

· Oakland County

· Macomb County

· Washtenaw County

· Kent County

Most Suspect Outcomes

· Michigan U.S. Senate – based on the highlighted retention of bogus 2020 ballots in key counties, plus a measly 19,006 margin in favor of Democrat Elissa Slotkin, I think Mike Rogers had his Senate seat, which would have been a GOP pickup, ripped off. Contiguous Democrat gains in western Michigan, which is mostly heavily Republican, suggests ballot padding designed to offset a close race down ticket and take a shot at sending Michigan’s electoral votes to Harris, highlighted below.

· Presidency – I noted Trump’s margin in Pennsylvania, notwithstanding Act 77 rule changes and baked in corruption, should have been higher than 6 points in a fair election environment. Likewise, a performance like that would put Trump over in Michigan by more than 5 points based on established differences between the two states. While Trump ultimately won the state, it is clear he did so over extensive corruption, as Harris lags Barack Obama’s 2008 vote total (which won him Michigan by 16.4%) in a state not growing in population by less than 5% despite all the minority and white-working class shifts favoring Trump statewide.

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Michigan receives a Grade of 4 - Highest Concern – based on its demerits, known troubles, indication of concentrated manipulation in 2024, organic corruption rings, and corrupt elections infrastructure codified in law tightly guarded by three of the most corrupt elected officials in American history. Michigan qualifies as one of just five states that will receive the most serious negative rating regarding election integrity and the administration of the 2020 election.

Demerits: Same Day Registration, Ballot Harvesting, Unique Corruption, Automatic Voter Registration

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Seth Keshel, MBA, is a former Army Captain of Military Intelligence and Afghanistan veteran. His analytical method of election forecasting and analytics is known worldwide, and he has been commended by President Donald J. Trump for his work in the field.