Opinion: Can Trump win Michigan in 2024? These factors could affect his fate

A straightforward question: If former President Donald Trump is the Republican candidate for president in 2024, could he win Michigan?

A straightforward answer: Well, duh. if Trump is on the ballot, sure, he could win.

Of course, he could lose. Trump has experienced both victory and defeat in this state, despite what he pretends happened here in 2020.

Michigan will be no less important in 2024 than it has been in the last four election cycles. And like in every election, it's the voters who will decide if Trump wins or loses.

Which voters? The ones who are the most PO’ed.

Let's get to speculating

We tread speculative waters in this discussion. Such is the nature of political forecasting.

Consider: If the 2024 election were held today, Tump could win, yes. More likely, he'd lose.

Meaning President Joe Biden would win — Michigan, at least — even though he is generally unpopular.

Why might Biden win? First, he has a real record of accomplishment, with real, tangible achievements. All that road construction out there? The huge chunk of federal money sent to Michigan under Biden funded a big part of that construction. He's taking meaningful steps to slow climate change.

(Trump had a transportation plan, didn’t he? He said he did. What happened to it?)

Second, Trump would lose today because the Michigan Republican Party is a chaotic mess. And broke. And everyone in the party seems to hate each other. They’d rather throw punches — that's not a figure of speech — than develop campaign strategies. That hurts Trump and the entire party.

Meanwhile, Democrats right now look like a well-disciplined, command-focused army.

Which is the first time they have looked that way since ... well, this reporter can’t think of whenthey ever looked like that. Big advantage: Biden.

But Democrats have to show their discipline by working harder than they did in 2020 and 2022. And make sure their fellow Democrats vote; not sit on their butts as they did in 2016. And honestly, the main reason Trump would likely lose today? Most people don’t like him. They just don’t like him. (Why? It would take a multi-volume encyclopedia to explain.)

The anger index

Trump has clocked four wins in Michigan: The 2000 Reform Party primary, the 2016 Republican primary, that year's general election, and the 2020 Republican primary.

The only times he has won a majority of Michigan votes, however, have been when he was the only candidate on the ballot: In the 2000 Reform primary — a whopping 2,164 votes statewide were cast for Trump that year — and in the 2020 Republican primary. In those other contests, he just got more votes than the other candidates.

In 2020, Biden won an outright majority of all the votes cast. It wasn’t huge, but it was a 3-point majority.

Remember how all of this is speculative?

The conditions today will not be the conditions some 16 months from now. At this moment, it appears Trump and Biden will be their parties' front-runners, but that could change.

Consider: Trump’s legal status is constantly changing, not generally for the better. Already indicted for squirreling away critical confidential U.S. documents — now charged with 40 counts in that case — Trump has also been indicted for a hush money arrangement with porn star Stormy Daniels — with whom Trump was having an affair while his wife Melania was pregnant — just last week for his involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection and attempts to steal the 2020 election — and he is expected to be indicted in Georgia for his ham-handed attempts to twist state officials into changing the 2020 voting results in the Peach State.

This history enrages both sides: His supporters are screaming the U.S. judicial system has been “weaponized” against Trump, while his opponents fume, “THIS corrupt guy was president? And you WANT him to be president again?” Adding to the rage on his opponents’ side are Trump's revelations that if he is returned to office, he wants to increase presidential powers to nearly dictatorial status, including eliminating the U.S. Civil Service system — the people who actually do the work of making this country run, which would be a disaster.

Other things will change between now and November 2024. What that will be, how dramatic such changes may be — and most important, what effect they have on the anger index — could dramatically change political prognostications.

Because that is how could Trump win, both here and nationally. That powerful ally: anger.

None of this is good

Trump is — pardon my French — pissed off all the time. His supporters are pissed off too.

Most times, you might not see that anger. Most times, like most people, Trump supporters are generally pleasant, easy to get along with, happy to have a beer with you. Anti-Trumpers are the same way, most of the time.

But talk politics, and Trump supporters’ anger appears, instantly, intently, unflinchingly. They don’t necessarily scream out their anger. This reporter recently spent a pleasant time with a lady who made tea and smilingly told him Biden was a disaster, Democrats were evil, Trump really won, Trump would win again, the survival of our country and way of life depended on him winning.

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To any question or challenge, the smiling yet fearsomely intense answer was that Democrats are truly evil, Biden is a senile doofus (Biden is younger than the lady in question), Trump will win, and he will save us. More tea?

Their anger is existential. They feel attacked, their beliefs, institutions and values threatened.

Many of these worries revolve around the expansion of America’s inclusive universe. In the efforts to assure women, people of all ethnicities, people of all religions, folks who are gay, straight, bi, trans are included in the American pantheon, Trump supporters feel excluded and targeted.

But weirdly, so, too, are anti-Trumpers angry. They feel Trump unleashed and encouraged attacks on them, their beliefs, their actions. Abortion-rights supporters are really furious at Trump for naming three U.S. Supreme Court justices who backed the constitutionally-suspect overturn of Roe v Wade.

That's the question in American politics right now. Not what party you belong to or where you come from: How freaking angry are you?

Anger is a great way of motivating voters. Angry voters vote. You can count on them to show up in the polling booths. Trump backers did in 2016, stunningly so.

Angry voters came out in 2020, but that year, the Democrats and their anti-Trump allies were angrier than Republicans. They, too, saw themselves under attack, and acted on it.

Going into 2024, which voters will be angrier? Trump supporters? Or the broader coalition of Biden-personal rights-environmental/climate change activist-societal inclusiveness activist-general anti-Trumpist–supporters?

It is sad that we can most effectively forecast elections based on who is more pissed off. Anger has driven other elections. Anger over keeping or ending slavery largely drove the 1860 election (and, of course, sparked the Civil War). Voters were angry with Herbert Hoover’s largely ineffective response to the Great Depression and pushed him out of office in 1932. But anger in the past has largely been driven by issues or conditions. Now, anger revolves around one person.

We should be voting over honest differences on policy. We aren’t. It is personality, the personality of Donald Trump in particular, that founded the anger driving our politics now.

And yes, because our politics is now so focused on anger, Donald Trump could win. Think about that, and think about how we can, if we can, restore some calm dignity to our electoral politics.

John Lindstrom has covered Michigan politics for 50 years. He retired as publisher of Gongwer, a Lansing news service, in 2019. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Opinion: Can Trump win Michigan in 2024 presidential election?