With less than two weeks remaining before the Nov. 2 election, campaigning across Michigan is at a feverish intensity and the state remains closely divided between the top two presidential candidates. According to an Oct. 13 Rasmussen poll, Kerry had a 49 to 46 percent lead over Bush just before the last presidential debate.
Michigan has voted for every Democratic nominee since Clinton won the state in 1992, but it elected Bush in 1988, and Reagan in 1980 and 1984.
Gary Wolfram, professor of political economy and economics, said that either candidate could lose Michigan and still win the election, but that will require winning other swing states such as Ohio or Florida.
"If Bush loses Michigan, he has to win Ohio," he said, adding, "If Bush loses Florida, he's probably cooked."
Despite all the media coverage for the national election, freshman Stacy Edwards is more interested in her representatives in the state legislature because she is an advocate of state's rights.
Abe Dane, a freshman from Hillsdale County, said that local officials are nearly as important as the President because of the direct influence they have in his community.
Hillsdale students, however, aren't the only ones interested in local elections this November. State Representative Bruce Caswell (R - 58 th district: Hillsdale and Branch Counties) said the presidential election could have a profound effect on the outcome of state representative campaigns across Michigan if either Bush or Kerry attracts a significant number of supporters to the polls.
Currently, Republicans control the state House with a 63 to 46 majority.
Caswell said that Republicans have more term-limited Representatives this election than Democrats and that three of the open districts "are marginally Democratic."
"At the end of the day I think we could be anywhere from 60 to 65 [House seats]. If Bush does poorly, we'll be on the low end of that; if Bush does well, we'll be on the high end," he said, speaking for Republicans.
Describing his own campaign, Caswell said, "I've put up a lot of signs, I've done a lot of door-to-door. I'm hopeful, but the game is far from over."
One of the reasons that a presidential election can have such an impact on local races is the tendency for most voters to remain in the same party column in which they started at the top of the ballot.
"Local candidates need to give people a reason to go looking for them on the ballot and I'm convinced that the way to do that is [through] face to face [campaigning]," Caswell said.
Associate Professor of Political Science Mickey Craig said that although strong presidential candidates can affect local campaigns, "the coattails of the President aren't as long as they used to be," because districts across the nation have become less competitive. Redistricting and pork barrel spending now give incumbents a serious advantage in most political campaigns.
"Most experts estimate, that of the 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representative only 25 or so are genuinely competitive districts," he said.
Straight ticket voting is another major way in which presidential elections can affect state or local elections. Representative Caswell pointed out that straight ticket voting in Michigan occurs mostly in Detroit, although it doesn't happen as often as it used to.
Dane said he thinks the straight-ticket voting option should be changed because "it would require people to think a little harder about their choices if it wasn't there." Edwards, however, said he doesn't mind straight ticket voting, and that it's a personal choice to use it.
Wolfram said Michigan's recent gubernatorial election demonstrates how straight ticket voting may affect the outcome of an election. He pointed out that in 2002, the Democratic Senate candidate at the top of the ballot, Carl Levin, was much more popular than the Republican candidate, Andrew Rakowski. Because of this, many voters likely voted straight ticket Democrat.
The governor's race, farther down on the ballot, was very close, and it could have been influenced by straight ticket voting. Craig also said that Reagan's 1980 landslide presidential victory helped several Republican candidates defeat long time Democratic incumbents in Congress.
The Michigan proposal to amend the state constitution to define marriage as only between one man and one woman could also be drastically affected by the influence of the presidential election in Michigan.
Both Wolfram and Craig anticipate that if conservative Christians turn out in large numbers to support the amendment, Bush could do well in Michigan. In this case, they both said that the Marriage Amendment will probably be more influential to the presidential election in Michigan than the presidential election will be to the Marriage Amendment. If President Bush draws a large number of Michigan supporters out to vote on Nov. 2, the proposal could pass easily. On the other hand, a successful campaign by Kerry in the state could result in its defeat.
Dane supports the marriage amendment, but Edwards said, "I don't think the government should have anything to do with marriage," although she added that she believes homosexual marriage is immoral. Edwards added that "divorce is far worse to the institution of marriage" than legalized homosexual unions would be.
Wolfram agreed that the more serious threat to marriage is the rate of divorce. He pointed out that the legal contract of marriage "can be so easily abrogated that" it is no longer trustworthy.
"The only reason to support the Marriage Amendment is to prevent activist judges from declaring same sex marriage a constitutional right. If the judges would mind their own business and allow the state legislatures to take care of this, there would be no need for the amendment," Craig said.