GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Tuesday’s election was the culmination of weeks of voting in Michigan to select a new U.S. senator and play a key role in choosing who will be the next president of the United States.

While it was unlikely the vote count would quickly declare Michigan red or blue, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said she expected results to come in earlier than they did in 2020.

“It may take a few more hours before we know for sure the results of this presidential election here in Michigan,” she said at a news conference in Detroit Tuesday night. “I’m hopeful that we will be the first of the seven battleground states to announce our unofficial results, and we’ll know that more in the hours ahead. But we’re on track to have those results by tomorrow, if not sooner.

“Already, every ballot voted in person and cast today has been tabulated,” she continued. “And while over 94% of the ballots voted from home were returned, there are still thousands that are left to be processed, and are being processed and tabulated as we speak.”

She assured voters that “we have a clear process under the law to make sure every eligible vote is counted,” but qualified, “that process takes time.”

“Election workers across our state are processing, verifying and counting ballots and they’re double-checking the totals before reporting them to the public. That will take as long as it needs to take in order to ensure we are delivering complete and accurate results,” Benson said.

WEST MICHIGAN TURNOUT AND COUNT

Polls closed in most of Michigan at 8 p.m. ET, with a few jurisdictions in the Upper Peninsula that are in the Central time zone following an hour later. Some preliminary results started coming in within minutes of the first polls closing.

“Generally speaking, you’ll start to see absentee ballot results come in first before the precincts in a jurisdiction,” Kent County Clerk Lisa Posthumus Lyons told News 8 around 9 p.m. “It’s not always the case. It just kind of depends. When we get results, that’s when we upload and report out. So you’ll start to see absentee results come in. We’ve got that with Algoma Township. We’re about to receive most of Grand Rapids city absentee and we’ve got Cannon Township coming in with their absentees. So right now, it’s an absentee vote results watch. At some point real soon, you’ll start to see particularly some of our smaller townships coming in with their early voting and Election Day voting as well.”

News 8 watched as electronic voter data arrived at the clerk’s office from Rockford, Grattan Township, Lowell Township, Cedar Springs, Walker, Cascade Township, Tyrone Township and Bowne Township.

Tyrone Township Clerk Shelley Worley, who is retiring after 32 years, said her township had 80% turnout and “really high” early voting participation.

Posthumus Lyons said that “anecdotally,” turnout was good in Kent County, though she did not yet have total numbers.

“We started Election Day really at 45% total voter turnout. I’m expecting 72%, 75% voter turnout when all is said and done,” she said.

Ottawa County Clerk Justin Roebuck told News 8 Tuesday was a “relatively smooth day overall,” with “pretty consistent turnout across most of our precincts.”

“I think we were helped quite a bit by the 42% turnout that we had really at the beginning of the day through early voting and absentee voting,” he said. “And that helped alleviate some lines in the precincts and made things go easier and more smoothly for our voters.”

The first results were from smaller jurisdictions that had fewer total votes to count. Around 11:30 p.m., Roebuck said larger jurisdictions like Hudsonville, Holland and Park Township were about to be reported. Allendale Ultimately, Ottawa County was fully reported around 1 a.m. Wednesday.

“We always have to make sure we’re doing the proper checks and balances. In some jurisdictions, the AV processing for their absentee ballots is taking a while. And so again, we are patient and waiting for that. We want to get it done right,” Roebuck said around 11:30 p.m. 

“As our results are coming back, we are tracking that by GPS. We physically are tracking the results as they are moving, as they are being brought back by our team,” Roebuck explained around 9:30 p.m.

While counting ballots during the August primary, Ottawa County’s forward-facing unofficial election results website crashed because of high traffic — Roebuck said that at one point, there were 192,000 page refreshes within an hour. Roebuck said a new system has been installed since then that should protect from a crash.

“We always have to make sure we’re doing the proper checks and balances. In some jurisdictions, the AV processing for their absentee ballots is taking a while. And so again, we are patient and waiting for that. We want to get it done right,” Roebuck said around 11:30 p.m. 

TURNOUT AROUND MICHIGAN

While she did not immediately have total voter turnout, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said during a news conference at Ford Field Tuesday night that Michigan was “on track for record-breaking turnout in this election.”

“As we know already, before the polls even opened, 3.3 million Michiganders had voted in this election,” she said. “We’ll know for sure in the hours ahead how many Michiganders turned out to vote in person today, but we expect it was at least as many who showed up four years ago.”

In November 2020, total turnout — absentee and in person on Election Day — was more than 5.5 million.

According to the Michigan Secretary of State’s Office, more than 2.1 million ballots had been cast absentee as of Tuesday morning and more came in Tuesday. Early in-person voting, new statewide this year, was required to start Oct. 26 at the latest and wrap up Sunday. About 1.2 million voters took advantage of that option, state data shows.

“Of the 2.3 million (absentee) ballots that were sent to voters who voted from home, 94% were already returned as of 7:30 p.m. tonight, and the vast majority of those have been processed and fed into the tabulators before today, with the rest expected to be tallied in the coming hours as clerks check in the final ones that were submitted to their offices before 8 p.m. today,” Benson said.

Laws that went into effect this year allow for early tabulation of absentee ballots, but county clerks have explained that no vote totals are generated before the polls close on election night.

Benson added there were another 6,000 ballots outstanding from military or overseas ballots that will be valid if postmarked by Nov. 5 and received by Nov. 12.

Benson added that statewide, any issues at the polls were “minor,” “resolved quickly,” and were “not widespread, but isolated.”

“Polling places were by and large calm and efficient, and energetic. People were excited to vote today,” Benson said.

WHAT’S ON THE BALLOT

News 8 has election results updating online as they come in.

PRESIDENT

Decision Desk HQ on NewsNation and The Hill projected that former President Donald Trump, a Republican, would defeat Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, around 1:30 a.m. Wednesday. A projection that Pennsylvania would go to Trump pushed him over the finish line of 270 electoral votes.

The Associated Press called Michigan — and its 15 electoral votes — for Trump shortly before 1 p.m. Wednesday. Polls showed it would come down to the wire in the key battleground state, with the two most recent polls for WOOD TV8 — one from EPIC-MRA released Friday and one from Emerson College Polling released Monday — showing a statistical dead heat.

This means that in the most recent three presidential elections, Michigan voted for the ultimate victor: Trump in 2016, President Joe Biden in 2020 and Trump again in 2024.

Dante Chinni from the American community project, a research group examining the change and growth of the country from a county by county level, said that in Kent County, changing demographics and a more diverse community are changing the political swing.

“It’s growing more diverse. It’s more levels of higher education voters, more voters with college degrees. And again, that’s happened alongside as the two parties have shifted places. So as Kent in particular has become more racial and ethnically diverse, has seen more college degrees, and the parties have kind of changed places. It doesn’t really lean this Republican anymore. It’s much more purple shifting, really almost to blue.”

It was an election cycle unlike any in recent memory, with two assassination attempts against Trump — including one in which he sustained a minor injury — and Biden’s late dropout in July, which led to a quick Democratic rally around Harris only weeks ahead of the Democratic National Convention.

U.S. SENATE

Michigan elected a new U.S. senator, with Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow retiring from the seat she has held for 24 years.

U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat, defeated former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican, Decision Desk HQ projected on NewsNation and the Associated Press called Wednesday afternoon.

China’s role in the Michigan economy became a key issue in the race, with Rogers making opposition to the Chinese-owned Gotion plant near Big Rapids one of his platform issues. At a debate hosted by WOOD TV8, he argued against allowing Chinese-owned companies to build electric vehicles domestically. Slotkin said she didn’t care whether people chose to buy EVs, but said the next generation of vehicles should be built in Michigan.

MICHIGAN HOUSE

Republicans reclaimed control of the Michigan House of Representatives, picking up at least 58 seats out of 110. Democrats had held a slim majority in the Michigan House of Representatives since 2022.

Democrats will continue to hold control of the state Senate because none of those seats are up for election this time. The next time the Senate will be up for grabs is 2026.

GRAND RAPIDS MAYOR

Grand Rapids elected a new mayor, with Rosalynn Bliss being term-limited. David LaGrand will be the next person to take the office.

LaGrand is an attorney, former Grand Rapids school board member, former Grand Rapids city commissioner and former Michigan representative. His opponent was Senita Lenear, a business owner, former Grand Rapids school board member and former city commissioner.

A FEW SMALL ELECTION HICCUPS

At one precinct in Plainfield Township, a tabulator malfunctioned Tuesday morning but was fixed by 11:40 a.m.

When a tabulator is down, county clerks previously told News 8 that voters are still able to fill out their ballots as usual — but rather than running them through the tabulator, the ballots are placed in a secure bin. Then, once the tabulator is working again, a bipartisan team that includes a Republican and a Democrat will insert the voted ballots into the tabulator.

Ottawa County Clerk Justin Roebuck said the weather caused a minor annoyance at the start of the day:

“We had some rain early on. Sometimes that rain equates to humidity. And so we had a few issues right at the beginning of the morning with ballots sticking together and sometimes it takes a few times to get them through the tabulator,” he said. “Same thing we had in August — our August primary also started out the day a little wet with some rain. But otherwise it’s been a really smooth day overall.”

At DeVos Place in Grand Rapids, a final few voters running through the lobby to get in line for same-day registration and voting before the polls closed. The about 100 people already in line at 8 p.m. were allowed to register and vote and everyone had done so before 10 p.m.

On Tuesday evening, a fire alarm went off in the Kalamazoo County Administration Building, with officials blaming a boiler malfunction. Staff evacuated as a precaution, leading to a brief delay in processing of early voting results before firefifghters confirmed there was no fire.

“All procedures are back on track, and the security and integrity of ballots were never compromised,” the county said.

—News 8’s Byron Tollefson contributed to this report.