Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance addresses a crowd of supporters on Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, at the Berlin Raceway in Ottawa County’s Marne. | Sarah Leach
With less than two weeks until the presidential election, the Trump and Harris campaigns have been stumping in Michigan — a key swing state — with more than 40 events this year in the Mitten State.
As weekly visits from the candidates intensify, smaller communities and venues have been targeted by Republicans in a bid to sway outstate rural voters. In a statistical dead heat for the 15 electoral votes Michigan holds, the question remains: Is it working?
According to polls released this week by NPR and the New York Times, all of the seven swing states in the country — Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada — remain a toss-up between former President Donald Trump, a Republican, and Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat.
As part of the Trump campaign’s strategy, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) has been visiting smaller and more rural areas than presidential campaigns typically do, such as northern Michigan’s Traverse City, Kent County’s Sparta, Mecosta County’s Green Township, Macomb County’s Shelby Township and Ottawa County’s Marne. While Trump also held a rally in Traverse City on Friday night, he’s mostly targeted more metropolitan areas such as Detroit, Grand Rapids, Flint and Saginaw.
It’s all an attempt to appeal to rural voters who hold a specific set of values Republicans want to reach, according to Whitt Kilburn, professor of political science at Grand Valley State University.
“Vance is appearing in smaller towns, townships, even almost sort of rural areas. It looks like they want to use these events as a way of highlighting their affiliation with social groups that they associate with sort of small town Americana, and through that, their association with a particular type of social values,” said Kilburn, who specializes in American politics, public opinion, elections and voting behavior.
Kilburn explained that communities like Sparta and Marne, which tend to have smaller and more homogenous populations than urban communities, tend to lean more conservative in elections, a demographic Republicans want to capture.
“It’s places where I think they can highlight their connection to a particular set of social groups … that sort of rural Michigan, where I think they want to communicate that by showing up in these places, they’re speaking for that particular group of people,” Kilburn said. “It’s all about communicating their support from and their association with particular social groups and cultural values that they want to appear supportive of.”
That resonated with people like 59-year-old Lisa Winfield, of Kent County, who was born in Canada before she immigrated to the U.S. She attended Vance’s campaign event at the Berlin Raceway in Marne on Oct. 2 after not being able to see him at a previous campaign stop.
“I think it’s like a once-in-a-lifetime thing … to be able to see something like this,” she said. “I just think he’s a great speaker. I think he really keeps some things even. He’s a very real person. He just wants to do right by the people.”
Witburn said it’s not about necessarily where all the votes are, but communicating “a particular set of associations with social groups and values that their voters find appealing.”
“So it doesn’t matter whether they are Reagan Republicans in Macomb County or actual farmers in Sparta,” he said. “It’s about communicating to all of their voters and affiliation with these different groups.”
People await the arrival of Republican Sen. J.D. Vance, who made a campaign stop on Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, at the Berlin Raceway in Ottawa County’s Marne. | Sarah Leach
Richard Zang, of Muskegon, also attended the Marne event, saying the choice of a smaller venue was appealing to him.
“You’re spreading out the word, right? Go to a small venue, and they’re counting on people … to get to the small venues and ultimately growing up and spreading it out to the larger cities,” he said.
Witburn said it’s all about communicating to voters that the campaign is working for their values and interests.
“In simple terms, it’s communicating to people: ‘We’re one of you. We want to do things with government that will benefit people like you, or people that you like, groups that you like.’ I think it’s all about the groupiness, the social groupiness of the vote,” Witburn said. “People very much use social groups as sort of reference points or cues for how to vote.”
And packed small venues, such as the 300 to 400 people at Vance’s Marne event, show good optics.
“They all want to avoid the worst possible media coverage of the event, which would be a camera panning around to empty seats,” Witburn said. It’s about managing expectations and being able to claim that ‘here we showed up and it was standing-room-only. People were waiting outside for hours,’ versus filing into a cavernous auditorium somewhere.
Harris’ running mate Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, also has made campaign stops in Michigan’s smaller cities and towns, including September visits to Emmet County’s Petoskey and Harbor Springs, as well as Washtenaw County’s Scio Township.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz greets attendees at a tailgate outside Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor, Mich., on Sept. 28, 2024. Walz attended the University of Michigan vs University of Minnesota football game. (Photo by Andrew Roth/Michigan Advance)
Kilburn said running mate selections in and of themselves don’t often move the needle for presidential candidates’ odds of winning.
They can, however, augment support with demographics and groups to which the main candidate wants to win over at the polls.
“Historically, usually vice presidential candidates aren’t really thought to make a big difference with campaigns,” Kilburn said. “But it does build inroads to different parts of your usual coalition of supporters that you’re trying to hold together.”
He used the example of Harris selecting Walz to hopefully do as well as Biden historically has done with organized labor.
“I guess the question is: Is it really persuading voters, or is Walz really sort of activating voters who are predisposed to be favorable toward Harris, but maybe just needed a little nudge? I think you could see that in the same terms of the sort of groupiness of voting.”
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