With 99% of the votes counted in Michigan, the vote margin between Republican President-Elect Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris is 1.5 points, or about 82,000 votes, a Republican shift in the vote margin of roughly 4 points since 2020.
In most Michigan counties, the shift in presidential vote margin was primarily Republican, and the largest Republican shift, 9 points, occurred in the state’s most populous area — Wayne County.
In Wayne County, a key Democratic voting bloc, the vote margin between presidential candidates shifted by roughly 9 points since 2020. The 38-point vote margin for the Democratic presidential candidate in 2020 decreased to 29 points in 2024.
“Wayne County covered the lion’s share of Trump’s margin,” said Brady Baybeck an associate professor of political science at Wayne State University. More than 850,000 Wayne County voters cast a ballot in the general election, with an estimated 99% of votes tallied, according to unofficial results from the Associated Press.
The map below compares votes cast in the 2024 presidential election to those cast in 2020 by Michigan county. It shows the shift in the vote margin between the Republican candidate, Trump, and the Democratic presidential candidates: President Joe Biden in 2020 and Harris in 2024.
In the Trump stronghold of Macomb County in 2020, 53% of voters cast their ballots for Trump and 45% for Biden — an eight-point margin. In 2024, the margin between the two parties widened to 14 points (Trump had 56% of the vote, and Harris had 42%) —a six-point Republican shift from 2020.
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The largest Democratic shift in presidential vote margins was in Leelanau County, an increase of roughly 8 points since 2020. The other ten counties that had vote margins shift toward the Democratic candidate were two points or less in counties where Trump received the majority vote.
“The usual narrative is that the rural areas drove Trump’s victory, but the map clearly shows that it was the metropolitan areas and, most importantly, Wayne County that drove Trump’s victory in Michigan,” Baybeck said.
Contact Kristi Tanner: [email protected]. Follow her on X: @MIdatalove.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Election Day 2024 map: How all 83 Michigan counties voted
