close
close

first Drop

Com TW NOw News 2024

    • Trump moves ahead of Harris in Michigan as vote count continues
    news

    Trump moves ahead of Harris in Michigan as vote count continues

    Vaseline Posted on

    play

    Republican former President Donald Trump, looking to take a huge step toward reclaiming the White House, took the lead away from Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in Michigan on Tuesday night, grabbing a 5-percentage-point lead in the vote tally with still more than half of the votes to be counted and totals in Detroit, the state’s largest city, still to be reported.

    With 43% of Michigan’s estimated vote tallied before midnight Wednesday, according to the AP’s unofficial count, Trump has 52%, compared to 47% for Harris. Come back to freep.com for updated results.

    Michigan, a battleground state that has helped determine the winner of the last four presidential elections, is considered one of a handful of swing states where both candidates focused their campaigns, hosting dozens of events. Trump closed out his presidential campaign for the third time with a rally in Grand Rapids early Tuesday morning; Harris, meanwhile, made four stops in Michigan on Sunday, concluding with a rally in East Lansing, before concluding her campaign Monday with a series of stops in Pennsylvania.

    Other than North Carolina, which Trump won, none of the other key swing states had been called by the AP as of midnight, though Trump held leads in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. As of midnight., Trump had a lead in the tally of Electoral College votes doled out depending on who wins each state, 230 to Harris’ 205; to win, either needed to reach 270 Electoral College votes.

    Recent polling from the Free Press had indicated that Harris appeared to have a slight, 3-percentage-point lead on Trump in Michigan, though that was within the poll’s 4-percentage-point margin of error. Other polling, meanwhile, suggested Michigan could be even closer − within about 1 or 2 percentage points, on average.

    Eight years ago, Trump stunned the nation by winning Michigan by 10,704 votes, about two-tenths of a percentage point, over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, en route to claiming the White House. In that election, he became the first Republican presidential candidate to win Michigan since George H.W. Bush in 1988. By also capturing Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — which, with Michigan, had been considered a Democratic “blue wall” — that year, he won the presidency.

    Four years ago, Democratic nominee Joe Biden became president after beating Trump by nearly 3 percentage points, or more than 154,000 votes, in Michigan as he also took a series of swing state victories in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In the aftermath of that election, however, Trump falsely claimed that Democrats had fraudulently stolen the election without any evidence to support such allegations. That, in turn, led to a mob of his supporters attacking the U.S. Capitol as Congress met to certify the vote for Biden on Jan. 6, 2021.

    Through both of those previous elections, Trump showed himself able to turn out droves of supporters, especially in rural areas and, even while losing in 2020, defying expectations from pollsters and pundits.

    How we got here

    Several months ago, it appeared Trump — who survived two assassination attempts — was poised to sweep to an easy victory despite being hounded by criminal charges, some linked to accusations he broke federal law in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and convictions that he falsified business records to conceal hush money payments to an adult film actress. Biden, 81, who had secured the vote to be his party’s nominee again, had a disastrous debate performance in June where he struggled at times to form coherent responses to questions and his standing in Michigan and other swing states plummeted.

    Biden left the race in late July, endorsing Harris — and she was greeted with a wave of enthusiasm and support as the Democratic Party quickly coalesced around her. Her chances were further helped by the single debate she and Trump had in September, which many observers believed she won. He declined to debate her again.

    But neither was able to decisively top the other in terms of polling support throughout the campaign.

    Trump, for one thing, had a favorable set of issues behind him and the Republican Party: Biden had seen poor favorability and approval ratings throughout his term in office, despite scoring several legislative wins, including a bipartisan infrastructure deal that had previously eluded Trump. But illegal immigration along the southern border spiked early on in Biden’s time in office, something for which the Republican former president excoriated him and later Harris, claiming — often falsely — that it was leading to increased crime rates. Trump promised a “mass deportation” once in office. He also railed against consumer prices that skyrocketed in the aftermath of the COVID-19 shutdowns, blaming Biden, Harris and the Democrats, even though similar or worse rates of inflation were seen worldwide.

    Trump could also count on the support of many Republicans and others who recalled that prior to COVID-19 shutdowns that began in March 2020, his term had been marked by gains in jobs and the stock market. And he argued that a Democratic push to get automakers to make and consumers to buy electric vehicles would decimate the American car industry, something that was expected to have particular effect among Michigan voters.

    Trump ramps up campaign promises

    With Harris in the race, however, and growing levels of support for her, he felt it wasn’t enough. Trump began making ever larger campaign promises, not only saying he would return the domestic auto industry to levels of employment and production not seen in decades — despite having seen auto jobs drop in Michigan during his first term before COVID hit — but also saying he’d cut taxes on overtime, tips, Social Security benefits and auto loans, as well as impose withering tariffs on imported goods. He never explained how he’d make up federal revenues or keep consumer prices from going even higher, though it clearly resonated with many of his supporters.

    Vivian Teeples, a 20-year-old Home Depot salesperson, cast her ballot for Trump in Livingston County’s Genoa Township on Tuesday in what was her first presidential election.

    “It definitely feels good to get my vote out there,” said Teeples, who is concerned with wages not keeping pace with inflation and feels Trump has better plans related to foreign affairs.

    More: Find all 2024 Michigan election results here

    More: Who won Michigan in 2020 election? How presidential, US Senate results played out

    “From what I’ve seen, he has a lot of plans that he explains, and I like that,” Teeples said. “From what I’ve seen from Kamala Harris, I just see a lot of ideas that are good ideas but she doesn’t really go into a lot of detail.”

    Harris, a former U.S. senator and attorney general from California, had the more difficult task of not only introducing herself to the nation in a short timeframe but also convincing voters to back her despite those hard, lingering questions about inflation and immigration during Biden’s term. As a practical matter, she couldn’t distance herself from the president politically without alienating Democrats; she also needed to build lost support from independents.

    But she had some advantages as well — perhaps, most importantly, the divisiveness of Trump, who continued to hurl invective at his Democratic opponent, calling her “dumb” and “crazy” and who kept up dark and foreboding predictions of industrial ruin and nuclear war if Harris and the Democrats were elected.

    At one event in southeast Michigan a few weeks ago, Trump made headlines by bashing Detroit, despite the city being seen by many as on an upswing, saying if Harris were elected: “The whole country is going to be like, you want to know the truth? It’ll be like Detroit. Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s your president. You’re going to have a mess on your hands.”

    Harris promised to ‘turn the page’

    Harris leaned into her argument that, at age 60, she would represent a generational change from Trump, who, at age 78, would be the oldest president elected in the nation’s history. She quickly embraced a campaign that sought to “turn the page” from Trump and bring Americans together, with events that not only included Democrats but Republicans — like Republican former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who had rejected the former president as a threat to democracy.

    Harris’ own agenda was more nuanced, promoting moves to combat price gouging and put in place programs to help small businesses and first-time homebuyers. Perhaps more importantly, she signaled she would govern from the center and allow voices that disagreed with her “a seat at the table.” And where she said Trump would go to work with an “enemies list” of rivals to punish, she would begin with a “to-do” list for the country.

    At her closing rally in Michigan on Sunday in East Lansing, Harris, whose campaign crowds rivaled or surpassed Trump’s, said: “We see our fellow American not as an enemy, but as a neighbor,” the audience responding with loud roars of approval. “We have the opportunity in this election to finally turn the page on a decade of politics driven by fear and division.”

    She saw support, especially from women, begin to swell in the polls as she noted repeatedly that it was Trump who had campaigned as an abortion opponent and put on the U.S. Supreme Court three conservative justices who facilitated the 2022 reversal of Roe vs Wade, the decision that for nearly a half-century had guaranteed a federal right to abortion. As Harris and Democrats hit Trump and the Republicans repeatedly with cries of “We’re not going back,” Trump and the GOP said now that the issue of abortion rights rested with the states they would not try to enact more comprehensive national restrictions. The Democrats argued: Don’t believe them.

    In Lansing, Courtney McCants took three of her four young grandchildren with her to the polls. She said she feels it’s important to show children the importance of voting and “let them see that I don’t just talk it, I do it as well,” she said.

    McCants, who works in insurance, said she had no difficulty deciding between Harris and Trump. She didn’t want to say who she voted for, but said anyone could probably guess.

    While the economy and inflation has been an issue for her, “I definitely don’t want to see any rights taken away,” including reproductive rights, McCants said.

    “The other things he stands for – hate and stuff – I don’t want any part of that in my life.”

    Saleel Menon, a doctoral student in music education at MSU, also voted for Harris Tuesday at a Lansing polling place.

    He said the biggest issues to him were education and concerns about restrictions being placed on the freedom of educators at the K-12 level, as well as misinformation on issues such as immigration, sexual orientation, and race.

    “I just want to preserve some of the liberties that I grew up with in the school system,” Menon said. “I’m teaching at the university where I have a little more agency,” but “I struggle to see how, if we don’t take care of what happens in K-12, how it couldn’t come into higher education institutions,” especially public ones, he said.

    Questions about Gaza conflict for Harris

    In Michigan, however, Harris faced one other possible hurdle. For months, voters in the state’s large Arab American and Muslim communities had voiced outrage that the Biden administration — and Biden and Harris directly — hadn’t done more to demand a ceasefire in the conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and instituted an Israeli arms embargo. That led to Trump — himself a strong supporter of Israel — courting Arab American and Muslim votes in Michigan, even as Harris said she would do all she could as president to end the conflict and work to create an independent state for Palestinians.

    Although Harris made headlines earlier in the campaign when she shut down pro-Palestinian hecklers at a rally outside of Detroit with a withering stare, she also promised, by the campaign’s end, she would do everything she could as president to win a ceasefire and create an independent state where Palestinians could be secure in the Middle East.

    “On the subject of Gaza, I have been very clear, the level of death of innocent Palestinians is unconscionable,” she told reporters at a Detroit church on Sunday. “We need to end the war, and we need to get the hostages out, and as president of the United States, I will do everything in my power to achieve that end.”

    Together, the presidential nominees, their running mates, or, before he left the race, Biden, spent 54 days on the stump in Michigan since the beginning of February, averaging more than one a week, making for the busiest campaign season in the state in memory.

    Harris’ campaign in Michigan ended late Monday with her vice presidential running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, holding a rally at Detroit’s Hart Plaza, that included the Detroit Youth Choir and a joint performance including Jon Bon Jovi, The War and Treaty and Michael Stipe of R.E.M.

    Trump’s running mate, U.S. Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, stopped in Flint earlier Monday. Trump himself hit stops in North Carolina and Pennsylvania before making his final appearance of the campaign — as he had in his previous two campaigns — with a speech in Grand Rapids early on Election Day morning in which exuded confidence in his chances.

    “Grand Rapids, it’s been a special place,” he said. “Remember 2016? We were given a 3% chance, we came to Grand Rapids, I said ‘how the hell are we going to lose?’”

    Contact Todd Spangler: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter@tsspangler. Staff writer Paul Egan contributed to this story.

    Vaseline
    View all posts

    You Might Also Like