The Michigan Grand Old Party (MIGOP) needs to regain power in the state government because the Democrats have passed and continue to push hard to pass numerous bills that threaten our Constitutional rights and our way of life.
I am writing this essay because I have doubts that MIGOP has the right strategy to regain political power in Michigan during the 2024 election. Many conservative Michigan Republicans believe that Donald Trump’s current standing in political opinion polls will translate into a win for MIGOP this November. Party officials are now doubling down on their support for Trump and his platform.
That strategy ignores the lessons that should have been learned during the 2022 Michigan elections. Candidates for top offices vigorously proclaimed their loyalty to Trump and asserted the 2020 election was stolen Many anticipated a “red wave.” Instead, we saw a MIGOP face-plant: Democrats kept the offices of governor, secretary of state, and attorney general, and gained full control of the statehouse for the first time in four decades.
I was not surprised by the results. Months before the election, I compared the MIGOP platform with opinion polls of Michiganders’ top ten concerns. Few people cared about key elements of the MIGOP platform, and many people opposed some platform planks, particularly Trump and banning abortion. We lacked a winning political formula.
The Game of Numbers and the Missing “Dozen”
Electoral politics is a “game of numbers,” where both sides should adapt their platforms to appeal to the broadest portion of the voters. As J.D. Glaser aptly put it, we need at least 50 percent plus one vote to win.
Unfortunately, various polls and voter turnouts show MIGOP or Republicans nationwide keep lagging by a shortfall of nine to 15 percent of the required votes. To simplify this discussion, I will call this lag “the dozen” but, it could require increasing the size of the Republican vote by 20 percent or more because other potential voters might not show up at the polls and additional Democrats might vote.
Why did I pick a “dozen percent?” In the 2022 election:
Our gubernatorial candidate lost by 11 percent of the vote.
Our secretary of state candidate lost by 14 percent.
Our attorney general candidate lost by 9 percent.
A recent Gallup Poll had good news for conservatives. It found an upswing in conservative values. Nationwide the highest percentage of Americans since 2012 say they are socially conservative. Slightly fewer than four out of ten Americans (38%) now say they are socially conservative, which is 12 percent below break even.
- There is a second polling finding: close to half (44%) of Americans say they are economically conservative. This doesn’t help MIGOP much because we are concentrating on social values.
Many of the party faithful think they can ride Trump’s coat tails to victory in 2024, but how many voters actually prefer Trump?
- Exit polling from recent presidential elections revealed that approximately one-third of voters cast “protest votes” against the other presidential candidate. Put another way, one third of the Republican votes were anti-Bidden rather than pro-Trump. One third of the Republican voters represents around 15 percent of all voters—there’s that magic “dozen percent” again.
- Other polling shows that one-third of Republicans do not want Trump to run for office.
- The polling aggregation site FiveThirtyEight estimates that nationwide only 40 percent of voters like Trump, a 10 percent shortfall from a winning vote.
Let’s look at another poll that explores the views of Republicans who are not open to Trump as a presidential candidate. A New York Times/Siena College poll (July 2023) found that 25 percent of Republican voters are not open to Trump (that would be about 12 percent of all voters). Of those “not open to Trump,” half think Trump committed crimes. This is also where most MIGOP money is found: half have a college degree and earn $100,000 or more per year. By contrast, only a third of Trump’s MAGA base earn $100,000 or more per year and a quarter have a college degree.
Performance Shortfalls in the 2022 Election
The Gallup poll mentioned above also waves a danger flag about performance shortfalls. The upswing in conservative values was taking place during the 2022 election. The pro-conservative shift in political values was one of the data points that led to the expectation of a red wave. What went wrong?
Many Black, Hispanic, and Muslim voters hold conservative values but most didn’t back MIGOP. We only gained a little ground with those groups in 2022. It’s hard to argue that MIGOP is intolerant and anti-minority. The demographics of the Michigan Republican Party State Committee looks like a Democratic dream team. No white Christian male occupies the party chair or vice chair position. Our Chair is a Black woman. Three of our party Vice Chairs are Muslim. In 2022, we picked a woman as our gubernatorial candidate and a Latino, as our candidate for lieutenant governor.
MIGOP failures in 2022 demonstrated that pro-Trump conservative values are not enough to win state offices. Candidate quality, platforms tailored for local issues, party reputation, and a lot of money are vital.
MIGOP’s Pathway to Failure in 2024
The Democrats and the mainstream news media recognize MIGOP faces severe obstacles gaining “the dozen.” A recent Washington Post article ‘MAGA vs. ultra-MAGA’: Michigan’s Republican Party at war with itself overviewed MIGOP’s problems. Its’ analysis matched my experiences at the August 2022 and February 2023 Republican conventions in Lansing and various emails, Zoom meetings, and Facebook/Telegram posts. Let me overview the Post’s observations and add a few recent events:
- MIGOP is in debt and struggling to raise money. In March, the newly elected party chair, Kristina Karamo, told Republicans that the state party was $460,000 in debt and since then has declined to elaborate on the debt or describe a fundraising strategy other than to say she believed donors would return, according trio the Post. “You put the people first, and the dollars will come,” she claimed. Thus far the dollars haven’t come, and every email asks for money. Meanwhile, the party moved out of its long-time headquarters as part of a cost cutting scheme. Few events on the MIGOP website’s calendar seem likely to raise a lot of money. Since when has a state party earned serious revenue from a yard sale in the 11th District?
- A Party of Exclusion. Many MAGA Republicans are driving voters away, according to the Post. A successful political party needs to grow its base of support by attracting a variety of voters and interest groups. The August 2022 and February 2023 conventions saw MAGA groups sweep into power within MIGOP. Many of them openly demand purity tests of loyalty to Donald Trump and a belief that the 2020 election was stolen as a precondition to accept others as Republicans. They are proud to have driven out RINOs not realizing how many moderates and donors they alienate with such tactics.
- MIGOP is at war with itself. During the past year and a half at least four county parties have had members suing one another over who is in charge or putting forward competing slates at conventions, according to the Post. During the August 2022 convention, delegates needed to choose between two different groups of potential delegates from Macomb County. In Saginaw County, tensions grew so intense between segments of the party that both sides called the police. In Hillsdale County, Republicans from one faction of the party posted armed guards outside their convention to exclude about 80 delegates they had disallowed.
- “Election Integrity” Flops with non-MAGA Voters. MAGA has lost the public debate on election fraud and is getting ridiculed and discredited by the Democrats and mainstream news media such as the Post’s article as “election deniers.” MAGA has never proven its claim the 2020 election was stolen despite years of strenuous efforts.
- Election integrity doesn’t even show up within the top eight concerns of Michigan voters, according to a December 2022 Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce poll.
- In another part of the poll, another question found that only a third of Michigan voters are pessimistic about Democracy and question the 2022 election process. Of that third, only six percent cited election fraud as a factor in the 2022 election. That is two percent of all voters.
- Meanwhile, three quarters of Michiganders believe the 2022 election was fair and accurate. Nonetheless, Party Chair Karamo made unfounded claims that her election was stolen in 2022. At her trial, she provided no evidence of election fraud and in mid-June, was ordered by the judge to pay the city of Detroit $58,000.
I need to ask. Who would vote for such a disorganized, fractured, discredited party? Would you be comfortable with them at the helm of state?
To Win: Don’t Make the State Race about Trump and Reflect What Voters Want
The 2022 election demonstrated that making the state race about Trump means we lose. (Please see National Review, Wall Street Journal, another National Review, AP news, Brookings, or Politico.)
Political experts listen to the voters’ needs and propose solutions. Karamo’s “good neighbor” plan seems to ask canvassers to button-hole our neighbors to complain about the news media and the Democrats and push a platform developed in the MAGA echo chambers of Telegram and Rumble.
To win the game of numbers, MIGOP needs to broaden our voting and donor base by appealing to moderates and conservatives in minority groups (for example see these Pew Research polls: Blacks, Hispanics ). Michigan’s economy and inflation are major issues with Michiganders. We need to talk about jobs, education, personal wellbeing, and safety.
A MAGA friend of mine complained that this calls for compromises and look what happened in the past when we compromised. In politics, compromise happens when you lack the votes to win outright. At least in the past, we got some of what we wanted and prevented some of the more radical legislation. In 2022, we had several no compromise positions, linked ourselves to national rather than local issues, and we lost all political control.
To win we must moderate and adapt.