Voter Turnout in Oakland County Communities in Nov. 4, 2025 Election
(Kurt Metzger, Nov. 6, 2025)
Oakland County, MI – The November 2025 election is in the books and it is time to look at turnout. This election differs greatly from either the Presidential or midterm elections in that several communities had nothing on the ballot, while others had no contested elections. Communities with contested mayoral and council/commission elections differed in turnout, while generally showing unimpressive numbers. Several had no races for local leadership, but had school millages or bonds on the ballot.
The chart below ranks turnout by community for those who had elections.
Lake Angelus, with an uncontested race for two council seats, turned out 60.3 percent of its voters (187 total) and took first place.
Following in second is Lathrup Village where 42.8 percent of voters came out to elect three uncontested council members.
Royal Oak’s mayoral and city commissioner races brought 32.2 percent of voters to the polls, enough to rank third.
Clawson, which also had contested races for mayor and city council, came in forth place at 31.9 percent.
Most communities turned out at rates between 20 and 30 percent.
A total of seven communities had turnout rates below 20 percent. Among those were Northville, Keego Harbor and Clarkston which had uncontested council elections, as well as Oak Park, which had uncontested mayoral and council races.
Fifth from the bottom was Pontiac, which had a hotly contested mayor’s race, coupled with elections for an at-large and six district council seats and six library board members. In spite of passionate online discussions and media coverage, only 17.4 percent of the electorate voted . Across the 14 Pontiac precincts, turnout ranged from 8.7 to 29.5 percent.
Auburn Hills had a contested council race, yet only 17.1% of registered voters turned out to vote.
And third from the bottom was Hazel Park, which had a mayoral showdown that attracted just 16.9% of registered voters.
I have been doing an Oakland County election turnout analysis for more years than I wish to count. While specific issues and candidate races do affect turnout to some degree, the pattern we see in the ranking tends to be rather consistent. We have a turnout problem in many of our communities.
I would like to see all communities, especially on the low end, conducting more outreach to their residents to better understand what it is going to take to increase turnout. While residents may feel overlooked by their state and federal representatives, they can make a difference at the local level. Political and community leaders must make a better case.
Check out previous Voter Turnout stories at https://oaklandcounty115.com/?s=voter+turnout
For more stories about the Census and other interesting numbers, visit the Data-Based Stories Archives on Oakland County Times. Thanks to Data Expert Kurt Metzger for this work!
