Reply With Quotewww.economist.com/researc...id=1527355
Swing states: Michigan
The battle by the lakes
Jun 24th 2004 | ANN ARBOR AND DETROIT
The Economist
George Bush is putting pressure on John Kerry in Michigan, but the economy still counts against the president
THE mood in Michigan is mostly bleak these days. Pessimists say it looks like just another rustbelt state on the wane. Its jobless rate of 6.5% is well above the national average. The steep rise in petrol prices is a particular blow for a state where everybody seems to own a car or a boat or be involved in making them.
There are bright spots, however. Optimists point out that the jobless rate is down from 7.2% a year ago. Despite all the whingeing about local politicians, a charismatic young Democratic governor, Jennifer Granholm, enjoys heady approval ratings. And in an omen of better times ahead, the Detroit Pistons, an underdog team from an underdog city, has just snatched the basketball championship from the glitzy Los Angeles Lakers.
Mood may matter a lot in Michigan—a classic swing state where factors like election-day weather can influence the outcome. It is also one of the biggest compe ive states, with 17 electoral votes, and thus gets a lot of attention. Both parties have been running ads since February. Mr Kerry was in the state for the ninth time last week; a few days earlier Mr Bush sent his commerce secretary, Don Evans, to talk about the better job numbers.
All the same, Mr Kerry plainly needs a win here more than Mr Bush does. The Democrats have carried the state in the past three presidential contests. The party controls the governorship and both Senate seats. The home of the United Auto Workers, Michigan is one of the states where unions still matter. Detroit, a predominantly black city, is a Democratic stronghold; so is Ann Arbor, a liberal university town.
Yet Mr Bush is plainly within a shout. He has solid support in the conservative western side of the state and also in the wealthier suburbs of Detroit. An EPIC-MRA poll issued this month showed Mr Kerry leading the president by only two points. A recent Zogby poll of swing states actually put Mr Bush ahead in Michigan.
So why isn't Mr Kerry doing better? As in so many states, his campaign has made a slow start. The campaign director, Donnie Fowler, a former campaign adviser to Al Gore and Wesley Clark, was appointed only this month. More generally, although the Democratic faithful loathe Mr Bush, they wonder about his opponent.
Take two of the groups that you would expect to be fully on Mr Kerry's side. The local unions, who favoured Gephardt at first for the Democratic nomination, worry whether an environmentalist like Mr Kerry would be good for their factories. Meanwhile, Arab-Americans, a big voting block in and around Detroit, may be disillusioned by Mr Bush's Middle East policies; but they are unsure whether Mr Kerry would be any better, and so some favour Ralph Nader. Meanwhile, Mr Bush's people are making concerted efforts to lure Indian-Americans, a group that has usually voted Democratic in the past.
The Republicans like to point out that Michigan is less Democratic than it first appears. Republicans control both houses of the state legislature. The state once voted reliably for Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and its native son, Gerald Ford. Lots of independent voters live in Michigan (around 16-19% of the electorate), and they sometimes vote Republican.
It is these independents, particularly suburban working women, that Governor Granholm has been particularly successful at rounding up for the Democrats. Mr Kerry obviously sees her as an asset; she has been invited to address the Democratic convention next month, and one senior figure in the White House even claims that Mr Kerry thought about her as an ideal running-mate (she is ineligible, having been born in Canada).
But Ms Granholm's prominence also underlines some differences with Mr Kerry. She is more of a Clintonian centrist and a populist than the patrician New England senator. Mr Bush's troops will try to convince blue-collar types in places like Macomb County that a “Harvard Yard liberal” of Mr Kerry's stripe does not share their values on issues like gay marriage.
Yet Mr Bush will get the attention of such voters only if he can convince them that the economy is recovering. Around 150,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost since early 2001. Outsourcing is often seen as the culprit (even though a report issued this month at the Mackinac Policy Conference suggested that it accounted for only one in eight of the jobs lost). Mr Kerry's talk about Benedict Arnold corporations exporting American jobs goes down well in the rustbelt.
The economic pain may be most obvious in Detroit and its suburbs (home to more than 40% of Michigan's population), but it is actually spread across the state. In the west, the furniture-making industry has been hurt by cheap foreign compe ion; in the remote Upper Peninsula, mining and forestry are both in trouble. Another problem has been the cuts in local and state budgets. Ed Sarpolus, a pollster, reckons a third of companies rely on contracts with local government.
Yet Mr Bush is not without hope on this score. Manufacturing jobs are now holding steady. A high-tech corridor is being fashioned. Service industries—notably tourism—are picking up. There has been a property boom on the state's north-western edge along Lake Michigan, as residents from nearby states and retirees (many of them former car-workers) move north in search of the good life. Democrats point out that these exiles from the city are usually on their side. But Mr Kerry's hold on the state may depend rather more than he would like on that hovering cloud of economic gloom
