Trump leans on rural Michigan voter turnout in campaign's final stretch

BALDWIN, Mich. — Duane Munson has seen his grocery costs and daily living expenses inch up steadily over the past four years.

As the 76-year-old retired truck driver picks through sales at the Sav-A-Lot in Baldwin, an impoverished northern Michigan town of 902 residents, Munson sports a royal blue baseball cap embroidered with the Trump-Vance 2024 ticket on it. Fellow shoppers approve, he said.

From where Munson’s sitting — in a folding chair in his driveway soaking up the last warm days of October — the economy was better under Republican former President Donald Trump. And he’s not sold on Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris’ plan to fix it.

“Harris keeps saying it’s price gouging raising our food prices,” Munson said. “She’s full of s---. It’s inflation and the price of everything is up on account of her and Biden. Excuse my language.

"They spent way too much money," he added.

Voters like Munson in rural parts of the state were key to Trump's narrow 2016 victory in Michigan and may be critical to building a winning coalition in the Nov. 5 contest against Harris in order to overcome Democratic-dominated urban and suburban areas that cost Trump the 2020 election. Underscoring the importance, Trump rallied supporters Friday night at Traverse City's airport.

In 2020, Democratic President Joe Biden won Michigan over Trump by roughly 154,000 votes, 51%-48% or 2.8 million to 2.65 million.

Biden won nearly 2 million of his 2.8 million votes — about 72% — from Michigan's top 10 most populous counties: Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Kent, Genesee, Washtenaw, Ottawa, Ingham, Kalamazoo and Livingston. Trump, by comparison, received about 1.45 million votes in those counties; he won just three of those counties: Macomb, Ottawa and Livingston.

Biden received nearly 437,000 votes from Michigan's five largest cities: Detroit, Grand Rapids, Warren, Sterling Heights and Ann Arbor. That urban vote amounted to about 16% of Biden's total 2.8 million votes in Michigan. Trump, by comparison, received about 115,500 votes in those cities; Sterling Heights was the only one of those cities he won.

The urban-rural political divide was especially prevalent in the 1960s, becoming a focus of political scientists across the nation at the time, said John Clark, a political science professor at Western Michigan University. That divide eased for a time but, Clark said, "my impression is it's back."

Trump did "ridiculously well" in rural areas of the state and elsewhere across the country in 2016 and 2020, Clark said, a constituency the campaign will have to recapture and grow in 2024 if it hopes to pull out a victory.

"In this election, as close as it will be, and the fact that it will very much be a result of who shows up and who doesn’t, doing what they can to mobilize rural voters is a big part of the strategy," Clark said. "The hard part is they’re all spread out.”

But the Western Michigan professor also noted the Harris campaign's strategic running mate pick of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who grew up working on a family farm, appears to be an effort to reach more rural voters.

"I think it demonstrates that even if Democrats have done better in urban areas, the Harris campaign isn’t writing off rural," Clark said.

Trump's campaign, for its part, also hasn't shied away from overtures toward traditionally urban voters, holding multiple rallies in Detroit and courting Black voters at several of his rallies.

But the bread and butter of Trump’s margins in Michigan come from the rural vote. And his team is hoping to drive turnout there in part through its strategy of making contact with low-propensity voters and by holding rallies in spots like Traverse City, a Democratic dot on the map surrounded by red, rural counties south and east of Grand Traverse Bay.

"He can’t just win this area," said Sen. John Damoose, a Harbor Springs Republican who represents the Traverse City region. "He has to run up the score to offset other areas of the state. We love it to be taken seriously because we have a very politically active, super engaged group of residents all throughout our region here.”

State Rep. Tom Kunse, a Clare Republican whose district encompasses rural mid-Michigan, said the attention being paid to residents in rural communities who often don't vote seeks to capitalize an “untapped resource.”

Voters in rural areas can become a bit “myopic” about the weight of their vote, Kunse said, often believing a race is a shoo-in because everyone around them is Republican.

“They’ll say, ‘I don’t know anybody who’s going to vote for Harris,’” said Kunse of individuals who might skip the ballot box. “Well, maybe in Osceola County you run in those circles, but the race isn’t decided at the county level.”

Campaign strategy to reach rural

Direct communication with those rural voters, including through rallies held across the state, is key to increasing turnout in traditionally red regions, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley said Wednesday during a campaign swing through Michigan.

The party also has increased its urban and suburban outreach, Whatley said, acknowledging that “frankly, the Republican Party has not really ever tried to go out there.”

The Trump campaign has been targeting between 200,000 and 500,000 of GOP-leaning, infrequent voters in Michigan. But the overall strategy for rural Michigan includes loyal and low-propensity voters alike.

“They get the issues, they really do,” Whatley said. “I think it’s just a matter of making sure that they’re going to go out and vote. And that they’re also going to go out, talk to their family members, people at church and make sure that they’re going to commit as well.”

The Harris campaign isn’t abandoning efforts in rural Michigan either. Of the 52 offices Harris’ campaign has set up in Michigan, 12 are in rural areas. Some campaign surrogates have held events in outstate areas, including a last Saturday campaign stop in Escanaba by Gwen Walz, wife of Democratic vice presidential hopeful Tim Walz.

The Harris-Walz campaign earlier this month announced a “plan for rural America” that includes increased health care access in rural communities and improving access to land, markets and credit for small- and mid-sized farmers.

Amanda Siggins, a 37-year-old Cadillac resident and former chair of the Wexford County Democratic Party, said rural women she encounters while knocking doors or working a local phone bank are worried about access to reproductive health care under a second Trump presidency. Families are struggling with housing affordability and child care costs, she added.

There’s decreasing confidence in Trump’s ability to address those issues, Siggins said, and an overall fatigue with “vitriol” on the campaign trail.

“A lot of them that are still Republican say they’ve grown a little bitter about how the Republican Party has changed,” she said.

'I can't afford to sit this one out'

On the outskirts of Muskegon Thursday, Quinn Gabriel drove through canopies of autumn foliage, tracking between homes that sported multiple Trump signs in their front yards.

As she knocked on doors, the new college graduate and director for the Trump Michigan team’s Muskegon region didn’t dwell too long at front doors on who the homeowners were supporting (their yard signs were clear). Instead, she prodded the residents on how they planned to vote and if they knew about early voting options. The voters were well-informed about the options.

One of the Muskegon voters, Alene Miller, said she had already cast an absentee ballot and was signed up to work as an election inspector during early voting.

Another, Carol Jensen, said she planned to cast a ballot at her early in-person voting location for the first time.

In the Twin Lake area east of Muskegon, resident Gary Bosse said he would cast his vote at a nearby early voting center first thing Saturday morning.

Esmeralda Ceron Aguirre Dooley also planned to vote early, casting her first ballot in a presidential race since becoming a U.S. citizen in 2022. The Mexico native said she plans to vote for Trump.

It’s the economy, foreign policy and border security that were driving her to the polls, she said. As an immigrant, Dooley understands the desire to enter the U.S., but said she can’t forget the time, determination and money it took for her to gain her citizenship.

“It’s OK to come,” Dooley said. “But they have to come in the right way.”

In rural Michigan, Republicans have recruited volunteers who are pushing a message centered around Trump's economic policies to sway low-propensity voters and convince loyal Trump supporters to vote early.

Donna Vegter of Cassopolis said she was furious when she heard the news in May that Trump had been convicted by a New York jury in a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn star who claimed she had sex with him.

Vegter said she made a contribution to the Trump campaign that day and reached out to Kalamazoo-area Republicans to see how she could help get Trump reelected.

She and her husband were given a list of several hundred low-propensity voters in rural southwest Michigan to begin calling and visiting.

This marks Vegter’s first time canvassing for the campaign, a task that differs from canvassing in a city. Instead of walking from home to home, she drives, and most of the homes she approaches aren’t used to getting visitors.

Vegter said it's not unusual for her to talk with voters who like Trump's policies but don't care for him personally.

Her response to voters: "It's a vote, not a Valentine."

But the concerns Vegter said she hears most at the front doors of potential voters and over the phone appear similar to those in the cities: the cost of groceries, the cost of gas, a fear of America becoming more entrenched in foreign wars.

“You really see that stress point, that stress crack, where people are not getting ahead and are reflecting on a point in time where things weren’t really that bad,” Vegter said. “And then they say, ‘I can’t afford to sit this one out.’”