Why is that region so important and why does it continue to be the heart of the conflict between right and left? The first point has to do with numbers. In 2012 the three states voted for Barack Obama, four years later, in 2016, they chose to vote for Donald Trump, and four years ago they returned to voting Dem by electing Joe Biden. Each time a candidate’s margin of victory was minimal. Eight years ago Hillary Clinton was defeated in those three areas by less than 80,000 votes, while in 2020 Biden won by a margin of 260,000 votes. We are always talking about very narrow margins. This is why the clash between Trump and Harris will be very violent and constant in that part of the country.
Let’s take money, for example. Since Kamala Harris took over from Joe Biden, rivers of dollars have arrived in those three states, spent to hire campaign staff, but above all to pay for expensive television advertisements. According to data from the company AdImpact, the Democrats and the GOP spent more in Pennsylvania than elsewhere, followed by Michigan (second state for funds spent), Georgia and Wisconsin (fourth for spending). Michigan and Wisconsin lead the ranking as those with the highest number of advertising booked between now and November 5th.
Bob Shrum. Democratic strategist and director of the Center for the Political Future at Southern California University, explained very effectively to CNN why the closest electoral battle is right here. Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin are a microcosm of the polarizations that divide the country and define American politics today. They contain the rift between urban areas and rural areas, that between white collar workers and blue collar workers and that between the Maga galaxy and the woke positions of the cities.
Identikit of a region
Obviously the three are not carbon copies of each other, but they have enough points in common to push some analysts to talk about the Mi-Pa-Wi macro region. All three are less racially diverse than the rest of the country. According to the American Community Survey conducted by the US Census Bureau, whites represent three-quarters of the population of Pennsylvania and Michigan and four-fifths of that of Wisconsin. Hispanic communities also remain on the margins of the overall composition. Still in the demographic field, it is worth mentioning a population that is on average older than in the rest of the Union, with a more limited birth rate and lower migration. In Michigan and Pennsylvania, only 7% of residents are foreigners.
According to the latest census, in all three only a third of the inhabitants have a college degree and the average income is lower than the national average, particularly in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Last but not least, they are the land of early industrialization and since the second half of the 20th century they have seen a rapid industrial and manufacturing decline even though in the last three years they have been among the regions that have benefited significantly from the Biden administration’s subsidies with an increase of approximately 20-30,000 jobs.
Wisconsin in transformation
Clearly the three also present different characteristics and different situations. Ideally traveling from West to East, Wisconsin is the one that has some characteristics that make it a little different from the others. First of all, it is the one of the three with a less marked ethnic division, then whites without a degree, a segment that votes for Trump more widely, cast about three-fifths of the votes. Compared to other areas of the Rust Belt, Wisconsin is the one with more divided and rarefied communities, that is, small Trumpian cities and rural areas are a very large electoral segment which in 2016 and 2020 constituted 50% of the votes, compared to 30% in Michigan and Pennsylvania. It is no coincidence that right here the Democrats tried to launch an ambitious plan: to lose by reducing the margins with the Republicans.
For the Dems, the battle is also complex for another reason: the size of the suburbs which have become more democratic in recent years. The county that is home to the city of Milwaukee, for example, offers a suburban area that is half the size of those of Detroit and Philadelphia. Furthermore, in other suburban contexts in the state, Republicans manage to hold their own quite well by obtaining more votes on average than similarly sized districts in the Northeastern United States.
At the moment the polls show Trump and Harris essentially neck and neck, with the vice president ahead by 0.6 points according to the FiveThirtyEight superaverage. However, there is also good news for Harris, mainly due to some trends of recent years. What weighs heavily is the great growth of the state’s second city, Madison, which is also the capital of the Badger State. An increasingly important financial center and city of some important technology companies, it is also the home of the important state university. Dane County, home to Madison, has seen a population increase in recent years and is quickly turning bluer with notable increases in Democratic votes from 2016 onwards. Paradoxically for Harris the real danger could come from the Green Party, a small formation to the left of the Dems led by Jill Stein, ready to “steal” a few thousand very precious votes.
Michigan and the challenge for unions
Moving east there is another key state, Michigan. His story is very interesting. Let’s start with the surprise of 2016. During the presidential elections, Trump surpassed Clinton by 10,704 votes, a margin of 0.23%. That day, to everyone’s surprise, one of the pillars of the “blue wall” that had stood since 1992 collapsed. Yet it should not have been surprising that in that period the GOP controlled all branches of local government. Today things have reversed and in the last four years the home of the automotive industry has seen a good return of the Democrats. They vote out Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, control both houses of the local legislature and vote out two senators, a hold not seen since the 1970s. Yet there are new phenomena that can overturn this scenario.
On the one hand, the Dems are at risk because in the state there is a significant Arab-Muslim population angry with the White House for supporting Israel in the war in Gaza which in turn infects the young people on the campuses who already protested against Joe in the spring Biden. These are electoral segments that tend to be Democratic but could desert the polls, thus recreating the electoral gap of 2016. Alongside this, Trump’s electoral campaign is working hard to convince workers in the automotive industry that the green transition desired by the White House with the acceleration on electric vehicles it can destroy jobs. Ultimately, Republicans are focusing their efforts on eroding some of the Democratic support among a particular demographic: that of young African Americans. These are electoral segments that can count a lot in a close race.
The dems for their part have some strings to their bow. The first is the one relating to the issue of abortion, in particular since the conservative Supreme Court canceled the Roe v Wade ruling which guaranteed abortion at a federal level. This decision allowed the Dems to extend their strength into the suburbs and among the female electorate. The Dems also maintained a good share of voters in medium-sized cities and managed to maintain votes in the working class world. But precisely on this point I am in pain.
In recent weeks, some anxiety has grown in the Democratic house about the progress of the electoral campaign, particularly in Michigan, and about the grip that Harris has on the working class. Trump, in addition to focusing on messages about the risks of electrification of the auto industry, has courted blue-collar workers a lot by talking about inflation and the Chinese threat to the American economy. The local Democrats, led by Governor Whitmer, have asked the vice president to do more, including more rallies.
At the moment the average of the polls shows Harris ahead by 0.8 points, therefore very little. One way to win could be to bring unionized workers back to vote. The problem is that for the moment the support of the trade union world is more labile than that which was reserved for Biden in 2020. The vice president, even if she has received the support of some important acronyms such as those of the car industry, has not received that of lorry drivers and firefighters. And this exposes it to various problems, especially on the mobilization front.
Battle for Pennsylvania
The request of Michigan Democrats for a more massive presence in the region clashes with another necessity: the fact that Harris must beat crucial Pennsylvania inch by inch. According to analysts, the Kaystone State is the one that will most likely award victory to one of the candidates. One of Harris’ strengths in this state is her push into the white-collar suburbs. In 2020, Biden won the four large suburban counties around Philadelphia with an advantage of 300,000 votes, 100,000 more than Clinton received in 2016.
The GOP, for its part, has worked to maintain some strength among white voters without a college education. According to 2020 exit polls, the tycoon won more votes among working-class whites by a better margin than those in Michigan and Wisconsin. Furthermore, according to the Center for Rural Studies, the billionaire had better margins in small-to-medium communities compared to the other two Rust Belt swing states. Today the average of the readings says that in Pennsylvania Harris has an advantage of 0.6 points.
Much like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania is also home to a strange political experiment. Democrats and Republicans are trying a strange strategy: campaigning in their opponent’s electoral segments in the hope of “losing less”, so as to fight to the last vote. For example, Trump is trying to win votes among working-class African-American males in urban centers. At the same time, the Democrats are trying to reduce the Republicans’ margins of victory in rural areas, but also to accelerate gains in the suburbs. A set of bricks to build the great wall of the Rust Belt, even if the color of the wall is not necessarily blue yet.
