Michigan Governor elections 1950-2002

[SingingAnalyst]

In 1974, Milliken won over Sander Levin by 51.1% to 46.8%. I read somewhere that Levin supported school vouchers that year. Can anyone verify this?

[SingingAnalyst]

I used to know a family that moved from MI to NJ in the late 80's. I went to school with one of the kids in the family at that time before they moved to a neighboring town in NJ.  Now I know why they moved from MI to NJ: because of Blanchards tax hike I guess and high property taxes. Keep in mind the public sector unions were not as big then in NJ as they are now.

How did Blanchard get 68% in 1986 after that big of a tax hike anyway? NJ dumped Florio in 1993 because of a tax hike.

His GOP opponent, William Lucas, was Black (and anti-abortion). Lucas was only the second Black major party nominee for Governor (the first was Tom Bradley, D-CA, in 1982). Blanchard overwhelmingly defeated Lucas, 68.1% - 31.4%. Blanchard carried Macomb (which had just voted 2-1 Reagan and narrowly voted for Jack Lousma (R) over Carl Levin for Senate in 1984) 68.0-31.5. Blanchard also carried normally Republican Allegan, Hillsdale, Missaukee, Lapeer, Livingston, and Sanilac Counties. The only county Lucas won was Ottawa, a bastion of GOP and Christian Reformed Church loyalty, which Lucas won 55-45.

BTW, in 1974, Milliken (R) won with 1,356,865 votes (51.07%) to Levin's 1,242,247 (46.75%).

[SingingAnalyst]

Nice table.  What happened to Blanchard between 1986-1990?

That's exactly what I was thinking.  The only candidate to win in a landslide in this entire chart didn't get re-elected.

A spiteful Coleman Young refused to turn out the Detroit machine because of a feud with Blanchard. Combine this with very low turnout and the fact that it’s hard for a governor to win a third consecutive term, Engler won in a perfect storm. I’m glad I wasn’t alive/politically aware during Engler’s reign of terror. Blanchard was one of the best and most successful governors in Michigan’s history and he was replaced with one of the worst governors we’ve ever had.

Engler’s dismantling of the state mental health system and fiscal irresponsibility still have lasting effects on our state 15 years after he left office. Engler left Granholm a massive budget mess to clean up, and Snyder will be leaving Whitmer/El-Sayed with two public health crises and a budget balanced with smoke and mirrors to clean up.

Plus, Blanchard's dumping Martha Griffiths from the ticket and replacing her with Olivia Maynard, plus his divorce (his ex wrote a book "Till Politics Do Us Part") helped do him in, perhaps with women voters. The gender gap, according to polls, was somewhat smaller than usual that year.

I think Engler won for all these reasons, plus he energized the anti-abortion vote more than Headlee in 1982 (during a recession) or Lucas in 1986.

It was the first statewide election to my knowledge in which the GOP candidate did better in Macomb than Oakland, and the Dem candidate did better in Oakland than Macomb (in both cases by tiny amounts).

Exit polls showed all under-40 age groups voted for Engler, while all 40+ age groups voted for Blanchard.