A longtime reader in Michigan shared these interesting observations:
Democratic (both in the party affiliation and strict senses) politicians did particularly well in Michigan.
- All state-wide offices (Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State) went to the Democratic candidates.
- Democrats have a (narrow) majority in the State House and State Senate. This is the first time that Democrats control the Legislature and the Governor’s office in ~4 decades.
- A couple of Congressional districts thought to be toss-ups or Republican leaning went Democratic. This includes the historically conservative Grand Rapids area.
- Two major voter-initiated proposals to modify the State Constitution passed easily. The nationally prominent one is modification of the constitution to preserve abortion access. The other is likely just as important. Rational voting access is now protected by the state constitution. This step was taken to prevent our presently Republican dominated legislature from enacting more voting restrictions.
How did this happen? Three major factors:
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In the last general election, a voter-initiated proposal to remove redistricting from the legislature succeeded. The resulting redistricting by a bipartisan citizens commission produced more competitive districts.
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The abortion issue and the unpopularity of banning abortion access had a lot of traction.
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The Republican slate had a lot of rather poor candidates, a direct result of Trumpism – general Republican foolishness. The losing gubernatorial candidate was extensively bankrolled by the DeVos family and had no real experience of government at any level. At least one Republican stalwart here publicly denounced the Republican candidates as the least qualified slate ever and quite a few other conventional Republicans must have felt similarly.
My overall take is that the Republicans in Michigan took a beating and the results diminish their long-term prospects.
- The playing field is now more level without the legislature putting its thumb on the scales and voting access restrictions are going to be much harder to enact.
Divided government over the last 4 years produced significant gridlock. With the Democrats controlling state government, some issues that public here finds really annoying are likely to be addressed adequately.
Curious to hear from well-informed readers about the results in other states and whether similar or different factors were at play.