Historically, the first county-level meeting of the Republican Party took place in Jackson on July 6, 1854, and the party thereafter dominated Michigan until the
Great Depression. In the
1912 election, Michigan was one of the six states to support progressive Republican and third-party candidate
Theodore Roosevelt for president after he lost the Republican nomination to
William Howard Taft. Michigan remained fairly reliably Republican at the presidential level for much of the 20th century. It was part of
Greater New England, the northern tier of states settled chiefly by migrants from New England who carried their culture with them. The state was one of only a handful to back
Wendell Willkie over
Franklin Roosevelt in
1940, and supported
Thomas E. Dewey in his losing bid against
Harry S. Truman in
1948. Michigan went to the Democrats in all three presidential elections during the 1960s but voted for the Republican candidate in every election from 1972 to 1988, including "native son"
Gerald Ford in
1976. From 1992 to 2012, it supported the Democrats by small to moderate margins. Beginning in 2016, it has become a closely contested swing state, voting for
Donald Trump in
2016, flipping to
Joe Biden in
2020, and flipping back to Trump in
2024, with each of those elections decided by less than a 3% margin and the latter two making Michigan the closest state to the national results, making it a bellwether as well. Michigan was the home of Gerald Ford, the 38th president of the United States. Born in Nebraska, he moved as an infant to Grand Rapids. The
Gerald R. Ford Museum is in Grand Rapids, and the
Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library is on the campus of his alma mater, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Michigan's United States Senator
Thomas W. Ferry, was
President pro tempore of the United States Senate from March 9, 1875 – March 17, 1879.
Vice President Henry Wilson died on November 22, 1875. Ferry, being President pro tempore of the Senate, was next in the
line of presidential succession, and remained so until March 4, 1877. While the title "Acting Vice President" isn't defined in the Constitution, the title was widely used at the time (including by Ferry himself). who served as president pro tempore and acting president of the U.S. Senate during the 1870s. In 1846, Michigan became the first state in the Union, as well as the first government in the world,
to abolish the death penalty. Historian David Chardavoyne has suggested the movement to abolish capital punishment in Michigan grew out of enmity toward Canada, which made public executions a regular practice under British rule.
2020 election . While Republicans dominated the
Upper Peninsula and the
rural counties of the
Lower Peninsula, Democrats carried the state by winning the
Detroit metropolitan area. While Michigan remained
competitive in
2020,
Democratic nominee
Joe Biden's strength with traditional Democratic constituencies such as
Black voters (93% to Trump's 6%) and
organized labor (56% to Trump's 42%) ==Ballot initiatives==