If it feels like the presidential and vice presidential candidates are constantly here in Michigan this election cycle… well, it’s because they are.
Polling and history tell us Michigan is a swing state this presidential election: Having gone to Republican Donald Trump in 2016 by the closest margin of any state that year (10,704 votes) and then flipping to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 (by 154,188 votes).
Presidential campaigns spend a lot of time in Michigan.
Whichever candidate gets the most statewide votes wins all of Michigan's 15 coveted electoral votes. Kamala Harris (D) and Donald Trump (R) are nearly tied in most polls of the state's voters.
The map below shows where we know candidates (and some surrogates) have publicly appeared in Michigan since July 15, 2024.
The height of each county on the map represents the number of voters in the 2020 presidential election.
The colors of each county show which party had the lead in votes and how big the lead was. Dark red means Republicans had a big lead and dark blue means the same for Democrats. Counties that look almost white had both parties nearly tied.
Sources: CQ Press Voting and Elections Collection, Geocodio, Candidate visit information from campaign communications and reports from Michigan Public and other news organizations. • Data visualization and analysis by Adam Yahya Rayes and Zoe Clark | Michigan Public. • Visit marker locations are not exact. • Last update: Oct. 4, 2024.
The polls between Harris and Trump in Michigan remain tight and within the margin of error, which means every single vote matters.
“Michigan is smack dab in the middle of what's going to decide this election," political consultant John Sellek told It's Just Politics this week. "I don't know in my lifetime that we've seen this many visits, this many times, this close to the election from all four members of the two tickets.”
Just this week alone, Trump was in Saginaw, Vance was in Marne and Harris is scheduled to visit Flint this evening.
Between July 15 and October 4, the Republican ticket has put in four more appearances in Michigan than the Democratic ticket's 11 visits.
At this point in the election the campaigns are focusing on two things in Michigan: getting their supporters out to vote and trying to persuade undecideds or so-called “low-propensity voters” (folks who don’t regularly vote in elections) to go to the polls.
Visits by Harris and Trump — as well as their running mates and popular surrogates — are a major part of that effort.
Campaign events are streamed, national and local news will cover them and more people will likely consume that coverage than show up in-person.
Past research has found "inconsistent effects for such visits," according to the authors of a 2021 study in the American Politics Research journal.
The value of these visits may vary depending on whether you're measuring that value based on vote totals, the election outcome, donations, polling or local coverage of any visit, the researchers said. It might also depend on who is doing the visit.
Michigan's biggest county gets a lot of attention
Still, we’re seeing a lot of visits from both candidates to southeast Michigan, particularly in populous Wayne County.
“The number of times Kamala Harris has already been here during this cycle suggests how focused she is on that vote in Detroit,” Stephen Henderson, host of Created Equal, noted on the It’s Just Politics pod this week.
A closer look at Wayne County and southeast Michigan:
Trump has been making inroads in Detroit since 2016. His campaign announced this week that the former president will be back in the state’s largest city next week.
“I think Trump's going to probably get the highest level of votes that he's ever had in Detroit this time around,” Sellek said.
That doesn’t mean Trump will win Detroit. But if Republicans can cut the Democratic margin in Michigan’s largest city, that’s fewer votes they’ll have to worry about elsewhere.
Third party campaigns may not have the funds to make as many visits as their Republican and Democratic counterparts. But a few have taken the time to visit Wayne County, specifically the majority-Arab city of Dearborn.
That may make sense as recent polling of Arab and Muslim voters suggests that some are giving third party candidates, particularly the Green Party's Jill Stein, a serious look.
That's driven by frustration with Democratic President Joe Biden's vocal and financial support of Israel. The Israeli military's continued bombardment and blockade of Gaza has killed at least 40,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry and other sources.
A swing county in a swing state
On the west side of the state, Republicans have been giving Kent County, a lot of attention. Three of Vice Presidential Candidate JD Vance's seven visits to Michigan since July 15 have been in or next door to the county.
A closer look at Kent County and the surrounding area:
"Michiganders build things with their hands... and Donald Trump and I are ready to lead a great American manufacturing renaissance," Vance told a crowd in Marne, just a few minutes outside of Kent County, at a rally this week.
Kent, home to Michigan's second largest city (Grand Rapids), is a "swing county."
In 2008, former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, narrowly won the most votes in the county. But after that, a small majority of Kent's votes went to Republicans Mitt Romney in 2012 and then Donald Trump in 2016.
The county then flipped back to a pale blue in 2020, with 52% of voters choosing current President Joe Biden.
Kamala Harris hasn't visited Kent since she became the Democrats' nominee for president. But her pick for vice president, Tim Walz, did visit in mid-September.
It's the only visit to the county by the top of the Democratic ticket so far.
"Kamala Harris is going to keep creating tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs right here in Michigan," Walz said at the Grand Rapids rally.
The campaigns are also using the location of their visits to build relationships with the voters they need to turn out.
The Harris-Walz visits to big university towns like Ann Arbor and East Lansing are meant to inspire their already enthusiastic supporters and to engage younger college-age students to actually get out to vote (and maybe bring a friend or two).
If you look at where Trump and Vance have visited around the west side of the state — places like Sparta and Potterville — that’s meant to send “a message to the people out in those rural areas that they care about them," Sellek explains.
“I think they're essentially sitting down and saying, how many times can I get to Michigan per week between now and November 5th?”
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