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All 20 Michigan votes to the Electoral College | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Turnout | 59.3%  [1] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Elections in Michigan |
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The 1984 United States presidential election in Michigan took place on November 6, 1984. All 50 states and the District of Columbia participated in the 1984 United States presidential election. Voters chose 20 electors to the Electoral College, which selected the president and vice president of the United States. Michigan was won by incumbent United States president Ronald Reagan of California, who was running against former vice president Walter Mondale of Minnesota. Reagan ran for a second time with Vice President George H. W. Bush of Texas, and Mondale ran with Representative Geraldine Ferraro of New York, the first major female candidate for the vice presidency.
The presidential election of 1984 was a very partisan election for Michigan, with just over 99% of the electorate voting either Democratic or Republican, though several more parties appeared on the ballot.[2] All but five counties gave Reagan a majority; one (Marquette) gave him a plurality. Mondale carried just four counties, all with a majority: Wayne County (home of Detroit) and tiny Iron, Keweenaw, and Gogebic Counties, all in the Upper Peninsula, a region then typified by heavy unionization and the mining industry. Michigan weighed in for this election as 0.77% more Republican than the nation at large. As of the 2024 presidential election[update], this is the last election in which Washtenaw, Genesee, and Marquette Counties voted for a Republican presidential candidate.[3] Bay, Saginaw, and Lake Counties would not vote Republican again until Donald Trump flipped them in 2016.
Reagan won the election in Michigan with a decisive 19% landslide, marginally more than the national popular vote. He performed particularly strongly in suburban Oakland County, which he won by over 100,000 raw votes, but he performed strongly almost throughout Michigan's Lower Peninsula (home to the vast majority of its population), including most of its major population centers aside from Wayne County: Oakland, Macomb (Warren), Kent (Grand Rapids), Genesee (Flint), Ingham (Lansing), Washtenaw (Ann Arbor), Kalamazoo (Kalamazoo), and Saginaw (Saginaw) all gave Reagan majorities. No nominee had carried so few counties in Michigan's Lower Peninsula since 1952—as Adlai Stevenson had carried Macomb as well as Wayne in 1956; Barry Goldwater had carried three counties in the Lower Peninsula in 1964; and even George McGovern had carried Washtenaw and Lake, in addition to Wayne, in 1972.
Unlike Pennsylvania and some of the other Upper Midwest states, there were few signs in 1984 of Michigan's imminent transition to becoming part of the "blue wall" from 1992 through 2012. Whereas in some other states, Reagan either lost or only narrowly won working-class areas, he scored powerful wins in Macomb and Saginaw Counties. There were also few rural Democratic redoubts in the state in 1984, unlike many other states.
Mondale made inroads elsewhere in the country in "cultural elite" counties including college counties, high-tech areas, and artists' colonies.[a][4] However, Washtenaw County, home to the University of Michigan, flipped against Mondale, despite having voted even for McGovern in 1972.
And, as elsewhere, Reagan scored heavily in the state's affluent suburbs particularly concentrated in Oakland County. In 1988, Michigan would continue its run of voting more Republican than the nation, although this time only slightly more so, before turning blue for six elections straight in 1992. This is also the last election where Michigan voted more Republican than Ohio or Tennessee. This is the last election where Gogebic County would vote more democratic than Wayne County.
Reagan was the last Republican candidate to win Michigan twice until Donald Trump did so in 2016 and 2024. He also remains the last Republican candidate to win the state in two consecutive elections.
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- ^ "SOS - General Election Voter Registration/Turnout Statistics".
- ^ "1984 Presidential General Election Results – Michigan". Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. Retrieved November 11, 2013.
- ^ Sullivan, Robert David; ‘How the Red and Blue Map Evolved Over the Past Century’; America Magazine in The National Catholic Review; June 29, 2016
- ^ "CQ Almanac Online Edition". library.cqpress.com. Retrieved January 1, 2021.
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