GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — As a swing state, Michigan has been in the spotlight for months leading up to the presidential election.
The “purple” state is considered key territory for both Republicans and Democrats to earn enough electoral votes to claim the White House. Within state lines, Kent County in particular will grab lots of attention for its identity as a bellwether.
Over the last three elections, whichever candidate won Kent County also won Michigan and the election. But how did a traditionally conservative territory like Kent County shift into tossup terrain that translates to a Michigan win?
Whitt Kilburn, a political science professor at Grand Valley State University, believes population surge and development in Grand Rapids and its suburbs are the main reason for the shift.
“Traditionally, Kent County has been a Republican-leaning county, and its 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.
The numbers illustrate that. Approximately 362,000 ballots were cast in Kent County in the 2020 presidential election, more than double the number cast in the 1972 presidential election (175,461).
“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,” Kilburn said. “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.”
The Kent County Clerk’s Office still has old paper records from the county’s past elections, including these 20th century binders. (Matt Jaworowski/WOOD TV8) 
A group of binders hold the results and data from every election held in Kent County between 1992 and 2001. (Matt Jaworowski/WOOD TV8) 
The final tally of the votes cast in Kent County for the 1992 presidential election. George H.W. Bush won the county with 47.5% of the vote but lost Michigan and the election to Bill Clinton. (Matt Jaworowski/WOOD TV8)
In 2008, Barack Obama was the first Democrat in a presidential election to win Kent County in more than 40 years. Before that, Kent County was solidly red.
In 1972, Richard Nixon beat Democrat George McGovern 59.2% to 38.5%. Hometown candidate Gerald Ford did even better in 1976, more than doubling Jimmy Carter’s ballot total: 67.2% to 31.3%.
Republicans held solid majorities throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. The lone blip was the 1992 election, where George H.W. Bush took just 47% of the vote compared to 33.5% for Bill Clinton, offset by a strong independent run from Ross Perot (17.8%).
While Obama won reelection in 2012 and Michigan’s electoral votes, he lost Kent County to Mitt Romney by nearly 8 percentage points (53.3% to 45.6%). Joe Biden’s win in 2020 was a milestone in its own right. With a 51.9% to 45.8% victory over Trump, it was the first time a Democrat had received more than half of the vote since Lyndon Johnson won reelection in 1964.
But we are now solidly in the post-Obama era and Kent County remains firmly moderate. Are those changes now rooted in the county’s voting trends or are there other factors at play?
Kilburn believes Trump’s position atop the Republican Party has kept Kent County 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.”
Age and education trends are also pushing the electorate further to the left. A 2019 analysis by the Pew Research Center shows 41% of American voters with a college degree tend to lean toward Democrats compared to 29% for Republicans. In 1996, sides were flipped: Only 22% of college grads leaned toward Democrats compared to 27% for Republicans.
Turnout among younger voters has also risen in recent elections. The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement reported that 50% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 voted in the 2020 presidential election. That number is up from 39% in 2016. In Michigan alone, voters aged 18 to 29 sided with Biden over Trump by a 62% to 35% margin.
“As the urban core of the city continues to develop, and it’s attracting more young people into the state, or at least the young people who, again, went to college here and stay within the region. Those voters tend to be Democratic, so I think that sort of tilts the county back toward the Democrats,” Kilburn said.
