Talk Elections

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Was it just the wave of 2006 that propelled Granholm to a 14-point landslide? Michigan was the worst-hit state by the mid-2000s recession and faced 15% unemployment that showed no sign of improvement. Mass foreclosures, outsourcing, and the decline of the auto industry plagued the state.

Granholm’s name has become an epithet in Michigan politics and became pretty much the only talking point of Bill Schuette’s campaign last year. Whether she deserves it or not, Granholm is still widely regarded as the worst governor in Michigan’s history.

She had underwater approval ratings as late as August 2006 and trailed in the polls as late as September. Yet she won by half a million votes, won tons of counties that would never go blue post Trump, and Democrats won the Michigan House of Representatives for the first time since 1996.

I believe so

It came out during the campaign that DeVos had sent thousands of Michigan jobs at Amway to China, so there's that too.

Michigan was a pretty blue state until the last few years, in 2004 it was 6% more democratic, than the nation, 2006 was a D+8 year so Granholm winning by 14% is what you would expect.

2006 was a pretty good year for democrats in the Great Lakes area (Strickland won in a landslide, Casey and Brown were elected by double digits margin....)

Didn't McCain make a serious effort to contest it in 2008?

He ended up losing Michigan in 2008 by a larger margin than Devos did in 2006. Of course Sabato Crystal Ball had it at "Tossup" as late as August.

One thing I would note is a lot of Midwestern  states like MI, WI, IA, all stayed the same relative to the popular vote between 2004 and 2012. MI had a D+6 lean in 2004 and D+5.6 in 2012, WI had a D+2.9 lean in 2004 and D+3 in 2012, IA had a D+1.8 lean in 2004 and D+1.9 in 2012.

The only one of the big states in the north that had any Republican trend from 2004-2012 was PA that went from D+4.5 in 2004 to D+3 in 2008 to D+1.5 in 2012 in terms of its lean and that was due to it having parts of Appalachia which caused it to trend R in 2004-2008 in direct contrast to most other northern swing states that trended democratic.

It was an historically good year for Democrats and DeVos was an historically bad candidate.

sh**t went south for the Republicans in September and we all know that. And of course, Obama had a 'home region effect' in the MI/WI/IL/IA/MO area where his personal popularity and the recession all temporarily reversed the gradual decline of the dem lean of all the states in the region (except IL).

An incumbent Democrat winning in a blue-ish state during a Democratic wave election year by 14 points?  Almost an underperformance.

She also won a state house majority in 2006.

I am fairly sure that there was a point in the 2008 Cycle where Sabato rated Iowa as Safe D while rating Michigan as a Tossup at the same time.

D wave year, this was also before Granholm became politically toxic in the state

Granholm didn't become politically toxic until the fallout from the 2007-2008 financial collapses.  After that, she took the blame for the fallout.

The Dem anti-war message during 2004-08 was super appealing to the Midwest in a PVI sense.  Granholm's big win was just a side effect of that.