(light music) - We've heard now from Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, who actually says here in Michigan, this was the largest voter turnout in state history.

79% turnout.

Nolan Finley, usually in Michigan, in the past, when there's a higher turnout, Democrats tend to do better.

That was not the case in election 2024.

What happened?

- I don't know, I don't think anyone expected that, because it is counterintuitive.

But this was an election with a lot of passion, a lot of interest.

A lot of people wanted to get out and express themselves, and they apparently did.

- Stephen, same question.

I mean, you have been covering Michigan politics, 5.6 million Michiganders making their voice heard and shocking many.

- Yeah, no, and it's great news, right?

If you think of the path we've been on since 2018 with voter reforms and access reforms, the whole idea is to get more people to exercise their right to vote.

And so that seems to be happening.

At the same time in this election, what we saw in Detroit was the opposite happen.

19,000, fewer people turned out in Detroit than did in 2020 when Joe Biden was the candidate.

13,000 fewer than in 2016 when Detroiters sat home in large numbers, when Hillary Clinton was the candidate.

The question is why.

I mean, there are a lot of finger pointing going on about organizing and the Harris effort in Detroit right now.

There was an enthusiasm gap that I think no one thought existed.

You have the first black woman major party nominee for president, and the largest city with the largest African American population sits home in largest numbers than it had before.

There's gonna be a lot of analysis and a lot of questions about why that happened.

- Nolan, a lot of questions about why it happened, I'm curious about your viewpoint.

- I don't know, I mean, you would've thought with, well, the first black woman on the ballot and Donald Trump on the other side, he's always been a powerful motivator of Democrats.

I don't know what happened in Detroit.

Perhaps the campaign didn't spend enough time there.

Perhaps they felt like the voters in Detroit felt a little bit like the voters in Dearborn and a few other places that now that one of these candidates was suitable for them.

And this may have been, you may have been seen a bit of a protest, but I wouldn't begin to know for certain what happened.

It is certainly stunning that Detroit would not fit the trend.

- So Stephen, I've often said about 2016 that it wasn't so much that Donald Trump won Michigan, but Hillary Clinton lost Michigan again because of turnout, because of Democrats just simply not turning out.

It appears that Democrats maybe did not turn out, but it also appears that Republicans and voters of possibly all stripes turned out in much larger numbers for Donald Trump.

Donald Trump grew support in nearly every single county in Michigan.

- He did.

And look, kudos to him and his team for doing that.

That's not what we expected.

Like Nolan, I can't begin to explain it.

I think a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump this time will be the victims of the policies that he will implement, or at minimum, won't be beneficiaries of some of the things that he's gonna do.

They're gonna see over the next four years, I guess, what they've bought with their votes.

But there's no question that this was a shift.

There's a shift in the electorate.

Dearborn, those precincts in South Dearborn where Joe Biden carried 88% of the vote in 2020, and Donald Trump won the majority.

I mean, I think that's kind of indicative of this shift that we've seen.

It's not everywhere, but it is in some key places with some key demographics.

Latino men, African American men, Arab Americans switching sides.

Now, what are they gonna get for that vote?

What will happen over the next four years?

I would say not good things for any of those demographics, but they get to decide for themselves, and they did.

- Nolan, there was a bright spot for Democrats, interestingly enough, in another statewide race, and that is a Democratic Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin will become Michigan's next Senator.

What do you make of the fact that Slotkin was able to win this statewide race over Republican Mike Rogers, who really, I mean, spent a lot of time with Donald Trump when he was here campaigning?

- Well, I mean, she spent a lot of money too.

I mean, it was a very close race.

There was probably more money spent in that race, perhaps than any other senate race we've ever seen in this state.

He was outspent on the order of 10 to 1, and money doesn't always talk, but it talked loud enough, I think, in this case to push her over the top.

I'll go back to something Steve said in terms of the motivator here.

I think Donald Trump did as well as he did with so many different voter groups for the same reason he didn't win in 2020.

People punish failure.

They viewed his administration, first administration as a failure and voted him out.

And they viewed this administration as a failure.

And the huge mistake Democrats made, and I think Donald Trump wouldn't be president-elect today if they hadn't made this mistake, they picked a member of the administration that people were so dissatisfied to run for president.

I think almost any other credible Democrat would've prevailed in this election.

But people vote their self-interest and they didn't feel that the Biden-Harris administration had met their needs in the four years they gave them.

- Yeah, and this was a changed election, and it was framed that way by many different things, not just by Donald Trump, but by people's feelings.

Look, the economic indicators all say that things are much, much, much better than they were four years ago, but the ones that people feel day-to-day in their lives are still very, very tough.

- Stephen Henderson, Nolan Finley, there's a lot to dig into.

We will continue to in the weeks and months to come.

Thanks so much to both of you.