Presidential Elections Past Show Trends in Oakland County
(Kurt Metzger, March 31, 2024)
Oakland County, MI – The Presidential primaries are almost over and the major party candidates are decided. Joe Biden will represent the Democratic Party and Donald Trump will represent the Republican Party. We also expect to see additional candidates running independently, or representing the Green Party, Libertarian Party and others. Michigan has been identified once again as a ‘key swing state,’ and Oakland County, the second largest county in the state, will play a large role in the Michigan story.
I wanted to take a look at Oakland County voter performance in Presidential contests over time, and then take a quick look at who voted in the recently completed 2024 primary.
The first chart looks at the percentage of Oakland County votes for Democratic and Republican candidates in Presidential elections since 1992. The election of 1992 was the last time that Oakland County voters went majority Republican. George H. W. Bush defeated Bill Clinton 43.6 to 38.6 percent, thanks to an assist from Ross Perot who received 17.1 percent of Oakland County votes. Since that time, Democrats have won every election, though the margins of victory have varied. The largest margin was the 14.5 percentage point difference for Barack Obama’s first campaign in 2008. Biden’s victory over Trump in 2020 came in a close second at 14.0 percentage points. The smallest margin occurred in 2004 when John Kerry defeated George Bush by less than 3,000 votes (49.8 vs. 49.3 percent).
Voters selecting the Republican ticket in the primary outnumbered those selecting Democrat 145,000 to 120,000. The fact that a voter can select one or the other party’s ballot, regardless of their usual preference, coupled with the fact that the final selections were foregone conclusions and some votes on both sides were “protest votes,” we can still get an idea of party preferences across the county.
Chart 2 ranks the 14 communities that voted majority Democratic, while Chart 3 ranks the 36 communities that voted majority Republican. Madison Heights, where Republican votes outnumbered Democratic by 2 (out of 4,392), was left off both. Each party had one community where agreement was almost universal. Royal Oak township went 96.1 percent for the Dems, while Lake Angelus went 94.5 percent for Republicans.
While one can assume that 
past trends point to a Democratic victory in Oakland County in November 2024, the popularity of Third-Party candidates (as was the case in 1992) could also come into play.
