Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee
North Carolina Yankee
Moderators
Atlas Institution
Posts: 54,118
|
 |
« on: August 31, 2019, 01:40:39 PM » |
|
|
« edited: August 31, 2019, 01:45:27 PM by Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee »
|
Michigan is part of the Yankee belt as I like to call it and had an enormous influx of White Protestant settlers in the mid 19th century, who had moved there from New England.
During the 1920's it was one of the most Republican states.
In the course of the Depression though, the growth of unions and increased voting among Ethnics, not to mention the shift of black voters in 1934/1936 made Michigan a fairly evenly divided state. One could compare it to NC today where Democrats win it (twice in Michigan's case and allowing for FDR's much larger margin nationwide than Obama), but it remains a rather closely divided state with a GOP PVI lean of a few points for several cycles based on residual GOP strength in the rural non unionized areas, among Yankees and in the suburbs, while Democrats dominate Detroit, the manufacturing centers and mining regions on the upper Peninsula.
The other ironic thing is that Dewey had ties to Michigan. I think the impact of the war industries was the decisive factor in 1944. Dewey won it by 2% in 1948.
|
