GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — The political trend in Kent County continues to swing from reliably red to a more moderate purple.

With all precincts reporting on Wednesday morning, Vice President Kamala Harris took 51.4% of Tuesday’s vote in Kent County, nearly 5 full points ahead of former President Donald Trump (46.5%). The Associated Press called Michigan overall for Trump.

It is just the third time in the last 50 years that the Democratic presidential candidate won Kent County. Harris slightly underperformed her predecessor, President Joe Biden, who beat Trump 51.9% to 45.8% in 2020. She outperformed Barack Obama’s 2008 numbers, narrowly beating John McCain 49.4% to 48.9%.

Before Obama’s 2008 win, Republican presidential candidates had won each race dating back 40 years. Whitt Kilburn, a political science professor at Grand Valley State University, says population surge and more development in downtown Grand Rapids are changing the electorate.

“Traditionally, Kent County has been a Republican-leaning county, and it’s sort of dominant political culture has been in the spirit of Gerald Ford through Reagan-Bush conservatism, but that started to change right around the (Barack) Obama years,” Kilburn told News 8.

“I think that’s also the time when you heard people in Grand Rapids talking about how much the city had changed and how much the downtown had been developed. It just felt like Grand Rapids was becoming sort of a newer, more vibrant place. I think that was reflective of the fact that there’s migration into the county,” he continued.

The data illustrates that population surge. Approximately 360,000 ballots were cast in Kent County in the 2024 race, nearly double the number cast in the 1972 presidential election (175,461).

Kilburn believes Trump’s position atop the Republican Party is one reason why Kent County has stayed purple.

“Trump, for the most part, has been pretty clear. He rejects Reagan-Bush conservatism, and you can extend that back to Ford as well … pillars of moral traditionalism, commitment to free trade, commitment to strong military alliances,” Kilburn said. “MAGA conservatism is presented to voters as an alternative and (it’s) an alternative that is radically different from those ideas of conservatism.”