Updated Sept. 21, 2022
If you’ve been following Michigan politics, you probably know that the incumbent Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, is running for re-election against a Trump acolyte. And you may also know that the incumbent Democratic Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, is trying to stave off a GOP election denier.
But you should also be taking a look at the U.S. House elections, where redistricting led to the loss of a Congressional district, and a map that is slightly better for Dems overall.
We used our computational model to evaluate Michigan’s U.S. House races and find the ones that are most important for Dems to support. The TL;DR is that we recommend that Dem donors support candidates in four MI House districts in 2022, all of which are legit toss-ups.
This post summarizes the results of our analysis; full details are in a post on our Github site. But before we get to the data, two quick points:
Quick interlude #1 — reminder of our methods: (Feel free to skip this if you’re familiar with our prior work.) We’ve developed and refined a demographic model to project the intrinsic Democratic lean in each new district based on its makeup in terms of race, sex, education, and population density. When we put those demographics together with what we know about partisan lean and turnout, we think our model gives a more realistic forward-looking view than the “historical model” (which looks at past voting history) of what Dem donors could conceivably achieve if we’re smart about where to deploy our resources and energy. More details are in the GitHub post and links therein.
Quick interlude #2 — plug for our prior analyses: Check out our other analyses of upcoming U.S. House and state legislature contests, including recommendations in NC, TX, GA, and more, by following this link to posts tagged ‘2022’. We’ll be updating them with ActBlue links as they’re available!
And now, back to our MI analysis: Here are the Michigan districts we think are highest-priority Dem donation opportunities:
MI-3: Democrat Hillary Scholten came within 6 points of winning this Grand Rapids-area seat in 2022, and she’s coming back in November to finish the job. Her job will be made easier by new lines that make the district much more balanced, as well as her current fundraising advantage versus the Trump acolyte who ousted the incumbent in the primary, but this is still a tight seat-flipping opportunity that merits Dem donor support.
MI-7: Democrat Elissa Slotkin eked out a 3-point win in 2020 in her red-leaning Lansing-area district (old-MI-8). The newly-drawn district where she’s running is also swingy, and despite her current fundraising lead, Slotkin may need help to beat her GOP opponent, a current MI State Senate member.
MI-8: Democrat Dan Kildee handily won his Flint-area race (old-MI-5) in 2020, but redrawn lines make this area more balanced. His likely opponent, Paul Junge, is back for more after losing a close race to Elissa Slotkin in old-MI-8 last cycle.
MI-10: This small, newly-drawn district just north of Detroit was a free-for-all on both sides of the aisle during the primaries, and when the dust settled, Dems nominated former Michigan circuit court judge Carl Marlinga. Unfortunately, Marlinga has struggled to gain traction with donors versus GOP nominee John James, whose relatively close Senate losses in 2018 and 2020 gave him significant name recognition and turbo-charged his fundraising. We think this race is highly winnable by Dems, provided Team Blue can muster the resources against a substantially better-resourced opponent.
One additional note: If you look at our GitHub link, you’ll also see that MI-4 doesn’t look so bad (47% D in both our model and the historical one). However, the Dem candidate has only raised a pittance against his well-funded opponent, carpetbagger Bill Huizenga from the old MI-2, and does not seem to be a viable candidate. Thus, although we’re keeping an eye on MI-4 for the future, we can’t in good conscience recommend that you donate there this cycle.
| DISTRICT | OUR MODEL | HISTORICAL MODEL | NOTES/ANALYSIS |
| MI-3 | 53% Dem | 52% Dem | Toss-up; flippable by Dems. |
| MI-7 | 47% Dem | 51% Dem | Incumbent D under some threat. |
| MI-8 | 48% Dem | 52% Dem | Incumbent D under some threat. |
| MI-10 | 56% Dem | 51% Dem | Rated as R-leaning by many pundits, but seems more intrinsically D than appreciated. |
We made a handy ActBlue link for all four of these Michigan races — please click below and donate to help Dems win in the Great Lakes State!
Also, please read our full Michigan analysis here — there are oodles more data and pretty charts for your education and amusement!
Finally, please stay in touch by signing up for our email updates (see below) … more state analyses are coming down the pike!