by: Grebner
Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 16:24:57 PM EDT
An article I wrote for MIRS, which has been mentioned in a couple of posts:
This analysis looks at the change in Democratic share of bottom-of-ticket state-wide education posts, comparing the presidential and gubernatorial elections of 1996 & 1998 to those of 2004 & 2006. Over the course of the past decade, Michigan’s political landscape has shifted slowly but systematically.
The average Democratic share of the vote cast for major parties for the four statewide education boards, that I call “Democratic baseline”, was about 1.3% higher in 2004-2006 than it had been ten years earlier, mainly because 2006 was such a strong Democratic year. I would guess that 2008 will also show a strong Democratic baseline, perhaps around 54%.
The comparisons made below subtract out that 1.3% change, so we can focus on how different areas of the state have changed, relative to one another.
One obvious change is that municipalities with a large percentage of black voters became substantially more Democratic over the decade. The cause is probably not any substantial change in black voting patterns, but the simple demographic fact that wherever low-income minorities make up a substantial percentage of the population, white voters are generally in the process of moving out. This does not cause a net gain for the Democratic ticket, simply because those whites tend to simply move to a more distant suburb, leaving the urban core more Democratic, balanced by a heavier vote in the suburban fringe. To use the most obvious example, as Detroit lost some 200,000 residents over the past decade, it has become even more overwhelmingly Democratic. But the racial and political balance of the Detroit metropolitan area as a whole was largely unchanged.
A more interesting and significant change has been a slow, steady shift of upper-middle-class voters toward the Democrats, balanced by a blue-collar shift toward the Republicans. More precisely, the Democrats have been gaining wherever the voters could be described as cosmopolitan or well-educated, while losing ground in Michigan’s less cosmopolitan areas.
For example, it won’t surprise anyone that Ann Arbor, East Lansing, Mount Pleasant, and even Alma shifted left. But so did Grosse Pointe, East Grand Rapids, Midland, and Traverse City – all areas with top-notch public schools and an intellectual “feel”. At the same time, fading blue collar areas, including many old Democratic strongholds, have shifted in the opposite direction: Bay City, Trenton, Madison Heights. The same shift toward the Republicans was seen almost uniformly in rural areas that are not part of commuter belts – almost every township in Oceana and Branch became more Republican, for example.
These shifts interact with existing electoral districts in a striking way, which was probably not anticipated by the Republicans when they drew boundaries following the 2000 Census. While Republican majorities in rural areas are generally becoming stronger, their suburban margins are rapidly eroding and even reversing. Large, wealthy suburbs like Farmington Hills, Northville, Troy, and Saginaw Township suddenly cannot be counted on to deliver overwhelming Republican margins, and the districts built around them are suddenly vulnerable.
Because of its composition, Oakland County exemplifies the long-term trend very nicely. Over the past decade, Oakland shifted toward the Democrats by 4.3% – three times the statewide change. Ten years ago, Oakland’s Republican plurality was routinely assumed by every Republican hoping to win statewide election, but now the County has become a battleground. If the trend continues – which I expect – we will soon see Democratic candidates elected to county-wide offices, and perhaps even a Democratic majority on the Board of Commissioners.
Within a few years, the only reliable Republican margins may be distant McMansion suburbs, off-the-beaten-path rural areas, and the western Dutch enclave. There will be very few safely Republican suburban seats.
Leave a Reply