page_title: Michigan
section_title: Politics
hierarchical_section_title: Michigan / Government / Politics
caption_attribution_description: Gerald Ford at the University of Michigan in 1976
context_page_description: Michigan is a state in the Great Lakes and Midwestern regions of the United States. Its name comes from the Ojibwe word mishigami, meaning "large water" or "large lake". With a population of approximately 10 million, Michigan is the tenth most populous of the 50 U.S. states, the 11th most extensive by area, and the largest by area east of the Mississippi River. Its capital is Lansing, and its largest city is Detroit. Metro Detroit is among the nation's most populous and largest metropolitan economies.
  Michigan is the only state to consist of two peninsulas. The Lower Peninsula is shaped like a mitten. The Upper Peninsula is separated from the Lower Peninsula by the Straits of Mackinac, a five-mile channel that joins Lake Huron to Lake Michigan. The Mackinac Bridge connects the peninsulas. Michigan has the longest freshwater coastline of any political subdivision in the world, being bordered by four of the five Great Lakes, plus Lake Saint Clair. It also has 64,980 inland lakes and ponds.
  The area was first occupied by a succession of Native American tribes over thousands of years.
context_section_description: Michigan voters commonly elect candidates from both major parties, and it is generally regarded as a "swing" state which can be won by either Democratic or Republican presidential candidates. Governors since the 1970s have alternated between the two parties, and statewide offices including attorney general, secretary of state, and senator have been held by members of both parties in varying proportion. The Republican Party holds a majority in both the House and Senate of the Michigan Legislature. The state's Congressional delegation is commonly split, with one party or the other typically holding a narrow majority.
  Republican strongholds of the state include rural areas of Western and Northern Michigan, the Upper Peninsula, the suburbs around Grand Rapids, and Livingston County. Areas of Democratic strength include the cities of Detroit, Ann Arbor, Lansing, Flint, urban Grand Rapids, and Muskegon. Much of suburban Detroit—which includes parts of Oakland, Macomb, and Wayne counties—is politically competitive between the two parties.
  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 presidential elections during the 1960s and voted for the Republican candidate in every election from 1972 to 1988. Between 1992 and 2012 it supported the Democrats; early on in 2016, it was pegged as a swing state, and was narrowly won by the G.O.P. candidate, Donald Trump.
  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.
  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 as a result of enmity toward the state's neighbor, Canada. Under British rule, it made public executions a regular practice.
  Michigan has recognized and performed same-sex marriages since June 26, 2015, following the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges. Previously, such unions were prohibited under a 2004 state constitutional amendment.
  Michigan has approved plans to expand Medicaid coverage in 2014 to adults with incomes up to 133% of the federal poverty level (approximately $15,500 for a single adult in 2014).
  In 2018, the state electorate passed proposals to create an independent redistricting commission, and to legalize the recreational use of marijuana.
caption: President Gerald Ford was raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
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