Midterm election results and reaction

Just an interesting expert to talk to reacting to the wins and losses in this midterm election. Oakland University political science chair Dr. Peter Tromborn is here. He is going to break down some key races, and as people tend to decide, we have a map that we go to, and we can go county by county. Is there a specific county you want to, well, we should probably start in Wayne or Oakland. Any surprises here? 70% of the vote. Is that a big number? Maybe the numbers in general give us a ballpark. So that is a really good number, and it does, and if you actually zoom in by Wayne County community, I think we get to see even more. So we look where El Sayed did especially well. It's where you would He would hope he would do well, so it's Detroit, 92%. And this was one of the big question marks, right? Would he be able to reach Detroit voters? Would he be able to get the African-American community behind his candidacy? And very clearly, I think he did. If you go to Dearborn, you'll see even... Eighty-two percent. Eighty-two percent, right? Yeah, yeah. So if you look across Wayne County, where El-Sayed had to do well, he did terrific. Yeah. And if we then look at the, if we go outstate, right? We look at the whole state. About the bigger picture, yeah. And even though this map shows you like the sort of sea of red, it's important to remember that land doesn't vote. It's people. It's people. And so even in these counties where El-Sayed lost. Yep. His margin was better in 2026 than it was for the Democrats in 2024. He did Rogers 65, El-Sayed 31, yeah, still. So you know, he was not expecting, this is one of those things when people were talking about would the Haley Stevens endorsement of Mike Rogers, would that cost El-Sayed votes in Oakland County and Wayne County with the Jewish American vote, with the black vote. That was always going to happen on the margins. But what people weren't asking is, would El-Sayed pick up unexpected votes in rural areas? And what we found was what happened in Michigan was very much in line with what happened nationwide. And that is, Democrats ran far better in small cities and rural areas in this cycle than they did in 2024, 2022, 2020. Let's get to some of those small areas. You can pick one, or I'll just pick one. Marquette, blue to me. Is that usually blue? Uh, college town, college, yeah, so no, that's, that's one of those areas that El Sayed was expected to pick up, right? Okay, let's hop over to Manistee. Rogers won, but still 43%. That's pretty close, right? Yeah, yeah. And I think that's the difference. Even in some of these rural counties where El-Sayed loses, he picked up votes unexpectedly. And again, this is consistent with the trend we saw all across the country yesterday. Now, a lot of people were predicting this, whatever you want to call it, blue wave and how big the wave or tidal wave would be. Are you surprised with the results as it was coming in? Yes. So not that it was going to be a good night for the Democrats. But it turned out to be a fantastic night. And you can start to see that happening when North Carolina flipped the Senate seat, South Carolina flipped, Texas, Kansas. Iowa, it just kept going and going. It got to a point where before midnight, we knew that the Senate was going to flip to Democratic control regardless of what happened in Michigan. Yeah. We're about 30 seconds left. Looking forward to two years from now. We have two years. You study this for a living. What are you thinking in two years? So it's premature to talk about this being a Democratic mandate. This sets the stage for 2028 for a potential Democratic nominee for president. To earn the mandate that tonight suggests might be there. All right. Doctor, we appreciate your time. Dr. Peter Tromboy from Oakland University. We'll be right back.